My double helix, a sugar-phosphate backbone runs the course of a few special rivers. My Walian DNA is a lotic flow winding South towards the sun and into the Severn Sea. Prokaryote, eukaryote. We are one and the same, and yet different. We survive in all things.

All things are connected.

~~~

Mother River

My mother’s mother, borne by the Ithon Headwaters, Kerry sheep and curlew. Her mother, Jinny, of the Upper Severn Reach, dragonflies and lapwing.

My mother’s father, the Upper Lugg Reach, his father, the Upper Lugg Reach, his father, the Upper Lugg Reach, and so on into deep time. Horse and bracken. Wolves, hunted to extinction.

My mother and I, both borne by the Middle Wye Reach. We are of blossoming orchards and red-white cattle. My daughter too. Yet we all swim the Arrow.

The Ithon flows the Wye.
The Lugg (and Arrow) flows the Wye.
The Wye flows the Severn
…and into the Severn Sea.

We are together. All life.

~~~

Father River

My father, borne by the Middle Cynon Reach, of black coal and shire horses.

His father of the Ebbw Fawr, of heath and pit ponies.

The Cynon flows the Taff
The Ebbw flows the Taff
…and into the Severn Sea.

My father’s mother, of the Lower Tawe Reach, of sea trout and dogs.

The Tawe flows the Severn Sea.

We are together. All life.

~~~

My freshwater super-coils, stress-strained, have carved through rock-time: Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Triassic have reached saltwater.

We are all the Severn Sea now, in atomic suspension, sucked along vast tidal beats to beaches below Liassic cliffs.

I am Monknash, I am Dunraven. I am Jurassic coastal life.

We are together. All life. All things are connected.

~~~

 

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