Cassandra Voices

Tag: Nicholas Battey gardening poetry

  • Poem: Discovery

    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 waste bin, sequence

    on sequence of supercoiled code unread.
    But another journey took place instead
    ascent through sound, to ears, into words
    as you can almost taste that zingy first
    apple of the season, sharp on your tongue,
    sweet on your lips, parted and showing crimson.

  • Poetry: Fisheye by Nicholas Battey

    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
    Clattering jackdaws, black hands at edges of vision;
    A pigeon diving to the ancient oak
    Descants over a cloudsong.

    I work head down and I do not care
    About the crunching crowds along
    The path, children puddle-jumping,
    All actions an acting in the long
    Blind sleep of self, beneath the bronze Scots pines,
    Aplomb, adamantine

    Sentinels, setiferous fists raised to the hollow blue,
    Heedless of a conscious cry.
    Hedges patrol, keep watch on me,
    Vain and stretched in fisheye,
    Where the early frost becomes a forest of drops
    On the blinkless, lashy grass.