The Welsh Dragon

the winter sun comes blasting through the tinted Welsh windows and my skin feels it all at once, sudden and warm after the cold grey miles. through the glass the valleys roll on soft and endless, the long grass bending and lifting in the winter wind like it’s breathing slow and easy with the land.

I drift off again with the gentle rock of the carriage and the steady tick-tick of the wheels on the rails below, that sound pricking at the edges of my mind until i slip down into the dark, chin heavy on my hand, the old nicotine smell still clinging to my fingers against my cheek.

short sharp bursts of red and black keep flashing across my closed eyes, the sun cutting through the trees lined up along the farmer’s frozen wire, shadows jumping quick and gone as we roll past.

and then I see her, the great Welsh dragon, shifting and changing her shape with every new light sliding through the orchards and the dark passing things, red on black, red on black, alive behind my eyelids.

she’s the whole country come up to meet me — the hills, the cold, the old language I never learned — looking me over to see if I belong. then the clouds close, the strobes fade back to grey, and she sinks away into the land she came from, leaving me awake, almost there, not sure if I was welcomed or warned.

red on black, she turns,
the whole of Wales on my eyes—
then just the grey hills.