After time has seeped through the remaining years,
and 2050 is a fairytale,
the people of Pontypridd will say they were some of the first lost.
That the telltale trickle drip dripped up from the Taf into dreaming mouths
and adults counted up collected seeds and grains of sand and other dry things
they intended to leave for their children’s children.
The truth is, we need more names for homes that float.
The truth is, we will wake up, far too late, wishing for webbed feet.
Imagine one morning we all mudlark the same message in a bottle:
“The difference between abundance and despair is a kind word.”
That feeling, of fingers submerged in the past,
flooding our socials with likes and love,
or time enough to write imaginings that seep into skin
is floating away from us like words flow through a poem.
And the thing is, you can’t plant seeds in a flood.
Seeds drown, heavy with hope,
like dreams or bricks or books.
Maybe the Marsh Arabs can teach us how to build mudhif,
to mend tiny worlds, filling in cracks with scoops of gobaith,
before everything else is taken by the water.
The truth is, I don’t know what we will do
when Wales and water become the same word.
Hanan Issa,
Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru / National Poet of Wales