Luke Bateman

(A Tragedy of) Rock

After Alice Oswald and arrowheads

Birth was a slow age, a stage of new becoming.
When what was became us? Unclear.
We uncertainly became something.

Elsewhere, cold splinters bore and pried apart our world.
as we snook shape within earth’s blanket folds -
deep, warm, closed eyed chicks - we did not know to see.

We passed our adolescence half asleep, a seed’s slumbered stretch.
Our wake up call was urgent, scrabbling, excavation -
wriggling flashes of flesh chipped at us and I was wrought,
                                                                                              a fragment.

In hands, I cut and carved and sliced and dug and conferred in violent delicacy
transformations onto others. I knew flesh and I, once soft, learnt to be hard.
I dealt harm to the world, unearthed.

Mother Beard

Wearing a sparrows nest each day, I am
never clean cut. I am

not the regimented shave, my hands know
not to sever. I am

not the sleek grey slice of a wolf
but rather the sheep, the pastoral frolic, I am

mirroring the tumble of wooly clouds above,
daydreaming bodies for gods. I am

encased in an unspooling ball of yarns,
a pleasant shock for the long time no see. I am

not the beard of menace, viking hair-mask
nor should this beard suggest wisdom, I am

simply fresh skin kept warm,
fisherman’s jumper, grandmother’s scarf. I am

earthed like copper-brown grass roots
reaching out through the dark for you. I am

always becoming, thickening and thinning,
guided by the grace of air and shine of sun. I am

a chore to comb, a place to think, a shelter from storm,
fun to touch, never the same, I am

but a tangle of me, worn proud as a face,
smoothing the blade of my skull.

Limp

Snagged foot in a savage bolt hole
Curse the rabbit saboteur

Your ankle twists like a wobbly tooth
between toddler’s fingers
That terrible age 
between walking and falling prone

THUD: has the floor always been so firm?

We help you up
Arms around our shoulders, hopping crucifix
Leg crooked at the knee
Foot dangling like snared coney

To move now is to listen -
crags chuckle, paths uproot,
slips of air, prattle of twigs
each unyielding gate - 

and to see 
the thickets unfold themselves
sunlight catching cobwebs
moss cushioning rock, a whole world

Damn, how the route grows longer
when we walk with an almighty
limp

Luke Bateman (he/him) is a poet and recent graduate in Medieval History. Living between the mountains and the sea in Cumbria in England, he dreams of becoming a river. Follow his course to poems published by Fifth Wheel Press, Poetically and Green Ink Poetry amongst others at linktr.ee/lukebateman