Lew Watts
Ring of Iron
There are around six hundred castles in Wales. One for every five thousand people. Drive down any country lane, turn a corner, and there’s a castle. Many were built through vanity—one up on the Jones’, so to speak. But the earliest were serious, intended to kill and control. The English king, Edward I, built seventeen, including the four great castles of Beaumaris, Conwy, Caernarvon, and Harlech, our first stop. Today, no clatter of swords, no longbow rain. No sense of death and violence. Just wind, and the scent of moss.
battlement tour … lining each murder hole pellets of bone
About the Author
Lew Watts is haibun co-editor of Frogpond and author of two Snapshot Press books, Tick-Tock (2019) and Eira (2023), the latter of which won a 2024 Touchstone Award and Best Book of Haibun in the HSA Merit Book Awards. He is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023).