‘Wooden boulder (1978)’

     Land art by David Nash
 
It began among spleenworts and filmy-ferns:
     a chunk of stricken oak was chainsaw-carved
          until it was round enough to roll.
                Four hundred kilograms were heaved
     to Afon Cynfal’s edge and levered in.
 
                         It tumbled over waterfalls,
                                    caught on a ledge,
                    meandered from bank to bank,
                                             lodged under a bridge.
 
The artist tracked it, mapped it,
     photographed its every drift and stall.
          Twice he had to nudge it on
                but mostly it made its wilful way alone,
                                        gambolling over rocks,
                         settling now and then in silt
                                    till winter torrents washed it free.
 
One time, now black as slate, it lay in a stone and gravel bed.
          Through more than thirty seasons,
                it was girdled by foam, draggled with leaves,
                           carapaced in snow.
 
At last it reached the Dwyryd estuary
                              and beached on a sandbank
                     to be jostled by tidal push and pull.
 
                                                              Finally, it slipped away.
 
Sometimes it’s sighted – once off Ynys Enlli
                heading towards the Irish Sea –
                          but the artist’s watching for it still.
 

Gill Learner

in anthology Slow Things, 2015, The Emma Press, ISBN 978-1-9101391-6-5