Where Dower’s Cove is cow and hippie and tree, St. David’s rolling pastures summon maidens cavorting in the glen, galavanting under the stars, instead of bovine complacently chewing cud; lilting Celtic accents instead of gruff grunts and omitted T’s that extinguish all confidence in the education system. They’ll defend their dialect, of course, just as I’ll defend mine. To them, Welsh is an old bard with halitosis sitting in a cupboard somewhere; but to me, it is a Druid tending the Beltane fires, filled with trilled R’s and soft mutations, kindling phonetics of guttural ease that trip over my tongue. I know Dower’s Cove is only transitory, that I am bound to this place only by hydrogen bonds, so weak they are drawn in diagrams as dotted lines.