The Last Season

Bryn shouted at crows, jackdaws
always saluting a magpie, ready at the drop of a hat
to jump a twelve bar gate. One October we watched Spurs on Sky.
At half time he cooked a steak on top of the gas fire
no pan, no oil, no garlic, the room a reek of sizzling rump
the floor a minefield of pots packed with compost.

The night of his funeral I dreamed he hung out his ravaged lungs on the elder
by the barn of roosting bats talking to his sheep dogs
in the pair of old oil drums nesting in blackberry bushes.
He felt free of his rotten lungs and started to run like never before
up the hill in seconds flying off Foel Fadian lost on the wind
with no language and no words for death, morphine, redemption
cigarette. Pete my father in law paints the sky from his cabin in the woods
the buzzard on the telegraph pole facing a field of sheep
a watercolour just waiting to happen.

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