Byron Beynon
Byron Beynon lives in Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including Radical Wales, Planet, The Warwick Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales and The Chicago Review. Collections include Cuffs (Rack Press), Human Shores (Lapwing Publications, Belfast) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions). He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and former co-editor of Roundyhouse poetry magazine.
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
His Ghost on a Hill
The hardened ferns and plants
join the face of my grandfather,
a worker of black seams
in the night.
His years in a field of darkness
scowl back at me,
they rock the boat
that moves on class,
he is distanced
by the burnt decades,
opportunities he never knew
behind that primary face
which understood the order of survival,
handed across the blisters of time.
He once saw an orange moon
eaten by the clouds,
blue and grey were the scars
on that face.
He breathed the polluted air and lived
to thread the veins of his children.
His strength will not decay,
he hangs his ghost on a hill
overlooking the deep-seated sea.
I keep him alive in his silent race.
​
On Hungerford Bridge
The change-seekers
who squat under blankets,
the discarded cans and newspapers,
skateboarders who weave across
as trains vibrate
in and out of Charing Cross,
the saxophonist
facing St Paul's,
his notes airborne
in this fraction of city;
the indefatigable ant-like pedestrians
motion over a dark soup of river,
the multimillion strides
under a cloudless rhythm,
witnesses to the chaos of poverty
reaching for the fragments of eternal dreams.
The Cast
High above the kiln of orange tiled roofs
a woman sits alone
inside a public park,
resting under the cooling
influence of August leaves.
The flat canvas shoes,
a practical use
for her swollen feet,
the worn dress
that will fit for years
over the aged complexion of skin.
The two plastic bags
have balanced each hand,
weights of injustice
offending the summery air;
entering that solo life
each thought zig zagged
after the explosion
as a dying fire wept
deep inside
the cast of her secluded mind.
Portrait of A Gypsy
There are those
who'd want her
to move on.
They believe
she doesn't
fit into their
jig-saw of humanity.
Gypsy, Romany,
the rare traveller
within a different life,
but equal to all
those prejudice
minds she's met.
Her face has the strength
to say she is herself,
eyes without borders,
those determined lips
ready to taste
what life has permitted
her to receive.