Nicholas Battey 
Ion Light itself is a chapel an east-west wash spilt on the Christmas rose. Space itself is a chapel a fruitless bowl flowers dried in a jug. Life itself is a chapel at water’s edge murmur of patient prayer. Feature Image: Saint Enodoc Church, Trebetherick, Cornwall, U.K.
Discovery Discovery are coloured dark deep red. I heard one falling as I brushed the tree — a startled bird troubling bushy leaves — but with more plummet, accelerated power, crimson sinker parting waves of green, descending progeny, seeds sheathed in a cream flesh, webs of genes cradling what could be, bound for the food … Read more
Lovely Dead If I were to let you go who would I show this garden to; who would be there to tell me ‘no’ it’s not enough to say it’s blue in June, when echiums greet the bees (just as later they give finches seeds) and turns yellow in summer sun, burns to red with … Read more
Holy Hay I didn’t have a chance to show you the sainfoin I sowed back in May, remembering our holiday in Spain where we kept seeing it in bloom by the road and on waste ground, covering whole hillsides, great cerise stains of what we later learned was Holy Hay. Back here I bought some … Read more
All is Number If the late afternoon light is beautiful but God’s not behind it then my mind is just classifying; if the late afternoon light is beautiful and God designed it, it’s a blessing and a deep unknowable well: light seems a word beyond metaphor — a wave and a particle neither wave nor … Read more
Psalm The light and the wind on the water these wild winter days are breath of it The cardinal sun below cumulus flaring up skybeams a pulse Gathers the gloom but high in the east celestial moon unhides behind heart-racing clouds All in the arms of physics and this is heaven we are blessed to … Read more
Waking Up He had thousands of kodachromes when he died. Nowadays they’d be snaps stored on the cloud, given back tritely as memories by some iphone. Anyway, they went in the bin, regardless of what they meant to him. I have chameleon words, collections of notes, playing the same role: tie it down — capture … Read more
April Light I’ve let the world of people go in favour of growing spring evenings, what all the buds know, the jonquils and the willow, the prattling birds, water chasing water to river, fold of showers. What sage said April is the cruellest month, the year’s promise in its tall shadows? Let the world of … Read more
Last Breath of Leaves Cup a pear, hear it abscise, number the days until ripe; the river chuckles with swollen pride – back to a ditch by six, drained away to the scaly, selfish sea. At dawn there’s steam across the water, a cloud of egrets scuds over; old and waiting, mud for water, leaves … Read more
Leaf-ladder to the Sky Dusk drums down the harbour, Seagull sirens sound alarms, A quiet motor sings; Shards of mingling words slip away Where huddled houses hug the bay; A fish flops on the scalloped sea, Ripples spreadly ring, Ring, and ring, diminishing, to me: Here are all enchantments reined, Stowed within this compassed, solitary … Read more
Fisheye I, smudge in the eyescape of others, As my trowel lodges in mulch, Palm-sore, snuggle the quiet bulbs Into the trickling earth which inhumes us, While these, artfully coned, only swoon To consecrate a humble bloom. The sun paints everslant shadows all day In this great sphere of transition Centring nowhere, where I witness … Read more
