To Photograph a Snow Crystal

Paul Batchelor

978-1-902382-82-1

£5.00

First stage winner in The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition.


‘an original talent with an unusually good ear for verse both formal and free’ — Sean O’Brien

FINDINGS

1

He settles in the burn
till snow-melt smooths his young face younger still.
I would recall
all the lost places of his life & find them new again,
the images to which he will return:
a fossil of two fern leaves, which he found & gave to me;
a nest
of baby weasels, bald & reptilian.

He says We’d best work fast,
& drops his handkerchief into the nest:
the cauldron seethes: claws & teeth
needle the handkerchief.
When they’re attached, he lifts a clutch
of weasels up for me to see.