Saint Brendan
Brown limpets with tonsured heads
creeping over the fish-stink isle,
spongy underfoot, seaweed for grass.
At the head, fire-crowned Brendan
his feet licked by waves, knows tidings
odd. Is it word from God, or knowing
the wrinkled sea like his own backhand
(where’s the difference?) that alerts him?
Calls to his men that blue wilderness calls,
hurries back to boat, and off! Just in time.
Earth-shaker shucks, coughs up froth,
sky a flurry of seabirds, shredded clouds.
“Jasconius.” Brendan names. “Big fish.”
Watch in awe as the whale breaches, dives,
hands become crosses, land becomes beast.
How simple, the unmoving mistook for fixed.
Listen – to your god-gift skin, polyphony of prayer,
not one voice but many. Not many but one.
Luke Bateman is a poet living between the mountains and the sea in Cumbria. His writing has been published by Fifth Wheel Press, Green Ink Poetry and Corporeal, amongst others. Find him at linktr.ee/lukebateman