Poetry Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon (MA, Creative Writing, Newcastle University, 2017) Ceinwen lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and writes short stories and poetry. She is widely published in online magazines and in print anthologies. Her first chapbook is 'Cerddi Bach' [Little Poems], Hedgehog Press, July 2019. She is a Pushcart Prize and Forward Prize nominee. She is developing practice as a participatory arts facilitator and believes everyone’s voice counts.

Bracing Air

She walks, booted, over sand dunes, to the shore. His words ricochet, clamour through her mind like pebbled coastal drummings. Stones suck and churn in undertows; she tries to find a foothold on rocks, slippery with seaweed and salt foam.

He said he wanted her to trust in him, believe against the testimony of her own senses. She tried to bat away his half-truths and his lies, crazed by loyalty and love. Brine carried on northeasterlies, stings her shuttered eyes. Sight insists itself, refuses to be defied and she finds she cannot hide. A crab walks sideways and oystercatchers scratch sounds across the sky. A dead seal decomposes, stinks reality into reluctant recesses in her mind.

Realigned, she decides to trust her injured mind, and put him to one side. She’ll survive, leaving him to sink or swim, live or die, in tides tugged by his own karma. At sea, Coquet Island lighthouse basks in winter sunlight. Cautiously, she plans for next Spring.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

.Water-lust in Time of Drought

Under granite skies. I lie in wait, watch in vain, for drops of rain to break the drought.

Dove-grey clouds prompt thoughts of gentle drizzle, thunderstorms, sudden downpours to soften grit and dust. Earth needs to slake her thirst, she, like me,

stakes her trust, misguidedly. Temperatures soar, I can’t ignore this lesson –

innate needs often press on unmet. At life’s end entitlement’s worth nothing. Pride sweats away in rivulets: sticky nights follow arid days.

Green grass scorches, dies as dried-up turf.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

Space to Write

My old armchair holds me like a hug, still my cold mind resists. Refuses to release my brain to play with words, ideas and phrases; let alone to write.

My hands, automatons, finger my phone, open news feeds, start doom-scrolling. My eyes lock onto the screen, blink fast. My stomach churns. My nerves, it seems, are addicted to fear’s twin, adrenaline. Terror. Fight or flight: I’m paralysed. Powerless. A scream. Did it come from me? Detached from reality; I just don’t know.

I must have nodded off, spent; waking, I see a robin chick, pert and bright, sitting on my windowsill.

Our stares meet. I stay stock still for many moments. Then, young thoughts seed, stir within the now, ready for relay. I look outwards. Centred here, freed, I’ll find a way to write today. Sun breaks, warms my old armchair, soothes my tense back.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

She Fails to Write at Winter’s Solstice

Dawn-light breaks late, fades earlier each day, hibernation’s hours drug words in her mind. She seeks for rafts of lines, to displace grey –long shadows throw gloom and darken frost’s rime.

Hibernation’s hours drug words in her mind, what starts as a song transmutes to a dirge. Long shadows throw gloom and darken frost’s rime; distinctions, seen and imagined, converge.

What starts as a song transmutes to a dirge, rhymes and phrases drift in fog, lose their form. Distinctions, seen and imagined, converge; She burns garbled drafts, to keep her hands warm.

Rhymes and phrases drift in fog, lose their form –take alien shapes and land faraway. She burns garbled drafts, to keep her hands warm. Dawn-light breaks late, fades earlier each day.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)

Internal Contradictions

I am in love with ideas of fairness, justice, loyalty and empathy. Talking the talk, but stumbling on the walk. I am patient except when I am not the me I want to be.

I love reason, to listen and debate, to share what I have learnt over six and more decades. I am a mule, unable to shift in line with interesting times.

I am misunderstood and I misunderstand damned blessings or blessed curses and how to resist temptations to say, Sure, I get it, when I don’t at all.

Daily, I am saved by evidence of absurdity and subsequent laughter. I love to share my bread and lend my ear. It’s receiving I find problematic.

I am guilt and anxiety personified – these barriers to connection hurt –yet I am appalled by excessive introspection (the trait that I exhibit).

So, some believe I’m kind

of easy-going, funny –they see me get it wrong and laugh and warm to see self-deprecation. Inside, I hide how hard I work to swallow praise with grace and not to wallow in mires of deficits and shame.

And yet, against all odds, I find I’m capable of joy.

(Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon)