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This poem is taken from PN Review 265, Volume 48 Number 5, May - June 2022.

Two Poems Robert Minhinnick
A Drone above Port Talbot

51°35’07.0”N ٣°٤٦’28.6”W
51.585289, -3.774610


For Sally Jones

I dream of the Ffrwdwyllt,
the problems it gives to strangers,
lacking as it does a solitary English vowel.

That river runs backwards for some,
its water in knots and gnarls against the grain
of what they think they understand.
Yes, Ffrwdwyllt…

And because children live beyond words
I ask what are we but such children
laughing at a language in its agony?

I recall boys around a nest,
scattering the younkers.  Yellow bills, naked throats.
I still watch that nest disintegrating.
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