Cosmos

the clever skies come soft
from cocoons of my words
the Sun has its coat aloft
in thick seas of thoughts

Like rainbows

Words fell like rainbows
brightening up my day
their colour exacting but fine
and what’s more I realised
there with a smile
these words were entirely mine

Humbling pride and cheer

Someone I have never met
humbled me today
posted comment on my blog
with what they had to say

Tears they trickled as I read
with joy and pleasure there
And the tugging of my heartstrings
was way beyond compare

Island Moon

Full moon sliding fast over the water,
enough to read by,
be burned by,
rolling bright and cool
to the west, painting
a wrinkled, twinkled path
on restless waves of
aching blue turned dark,
reflecting clouds and stars.

Magical island nights, but doomed.
As the moon waned
a little more each night,
so did the magic.
Precious, but fragile.

Distorted Passage

I swim in
streams and rivers
instead of on land,
looking up
through ripples
seeing mere refractions
of unknowns
filtered through milky moonlight.

Down small creeks,
under
branches splitting
the sky,
dark firs waving in
the breeze like monks
chanting,
and oaks bragging of age;
rocks and crags,
shifting, rippling,
dropping dappled shards of
sunlight on
crystal, chuckling waters.

Passing through

Of the places that I travel to
surpassing all the rest
I have to say with hand on heart
Newcastle is the best

It has a certain ambiance
a ‘je ne sais quoi’ I’d say
Can’t quite find the words
but it appeals in every way

Sunday Morning II

And for a Sunday morning
as the day it gathers pace
here’s to lazy lie-ins and
just lounging round the place

Maybe a leisured breakfast
with some music by and by
or just a little wander
when the sun is nice and high

Then curled up on the sofa
Neath warm blankets snuggled we
will while away remaining hours
with something on TV

-01.02.20_01:03-

It sits on my chest
Dragging me down

First VI

6 of 12 in the Jemverse ’12 months III’ series

I leap this year with twenty-nine
for I’m unique like that
the only month to get the chance
for more days, that’s a fact
For I am February, that’s the truth
the second of the year
and also last of winter
in the Northern Hemisphere

Cowgirl

I encountered a young Colorado woman, once,
from a distance. Our trails crossed in our personal badlands.

A beauty, she had the raw fire of a mustang.
I caught her at a terrible time in her life.
Or should I say, she caught me.

Her marriage was coming apart,
her husband having lost interest and sunk into cruelty and betrayals.

We never met, except
as passing
electronic ghosts. She writhed and wrote of her pain,
her bruised pride and injured beauty.
She touched us with her anger and anguish,
her soul’s search for beauty nonetheless,
In that state she painted lurid images of
what she would do with me,
to me, what she wanted from me,
pinned against a wall, legs apart,
full of anger, fury, revenge.

Supplication

You leave me somewhere between the
pleasure and pain
between dreams and reality
the moment you bite your lip
and moans deeply
and leaves me with that aching
it feels so surreal
I feel so alive

It felt like Spring

It felt like Spring
through I knew that it wasn’t
outside in the garden today
as down near the ground
green shoots were around
with colour now well on its way

Emmaus

To Emmaus for a rummaging
in the bric-a-brac arcade
and later for an omelette
quickly for us made
We found a jug for flowers
but nothing else today
just nice to come and have a browse
upon a Saturday

Passion, Courage, Choice

I have chosen to seek
each day the path of courage
and passion.
I fail, often.

I don’t
say this with bravado,
because I do not feel brave.
If I could choose something
easier, I would.
It never gets easier.

But to make the choice each day,
Each minute, to turn and
face the sadness and suffering,
of the world; the pain and joy,
each on it’s own terms
and not be defeated by it—
that is something that
must be chosen again,
and again, and again.
It is the job of poetry.
No compromises.

It is not a choice of pleasant fictions,
a diversion of entertaining nothingness;
nor like the fog of opium that
leaves us still breathing,
but dead.

Each night, darkness does not fall.
That is the wrong image.
Rather, when the earth spins away
from the sun, it rises up from the deep places
of the earth and the oceans, from
the caverns and the bottom of rivers and lakes and seas.
A deep exhalation.
A time for alternatives.

As a stranger

In this still dark morning hour
before the day has yet begun
by water still and icy cold
with absence of a warming sun
All is quiet so with tippy toe
by the canal I slowly tread
as signs of life on longboats close
dimly light the path I’ve led

Too Anything

She said it was too hot,
too slow,
too fat,
too skinny,
too long,
too short,
too near,
too far,
too messy,
too loose,
too tight,
too much,
too little,
too soon,
too late.

We were too drunk. Too stoned. Then, in the afternoon,
too sober.

But it was not, and never would be, too anything.
Except, maybe, too unkind.

School of the Electric Fence

Photo by Richard Calmes

I suppose I knew this,
once upon a time,
but love is a little like
the electric fence I used to
crawl through to get to the woods.

You have to be cautious, not timid.

(I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with
Crosby when he said being with Joni was
like falling into a cement mixer.)

Of pizzas and pubs

And so it is to Bradford
on another winter night
I find myself at Noble Comb
with time to sit and write
It’s fairly packed this evening
with families eating out
and workers sharing pints of beer
their voices raised to shout

Fleeting glimpses of wonder

There’s something to be said
when travelling to Southend
of the sunset on the water
on the estuary of the Thames

Catching glimpses like this
of the things around I’ve seen
reminds me of the beauty
in the places I have been

Promises at Dawn

And in the early morning, I wait
Tendrils of light sweetly coax promises
from darkened skies

I watch shadows transform
Glittering dust dances in the corners of my mind
I am humbled by possibilities

Grief Journey

 

Loss and pains.
though just part of living…
set us apart,
others didn’t understand.
But we knew. We just knew. 

We wrapped ourselves 
in each other’s griefs,
grateful to need no explanations,, 
understanding without words;
afraid of more losses
(can I go through that again?) 
resisting pain, 
change and the unknown.

Yesterdays

I gathered all my memories
lest they faded to the past
No melancholy there
but I wanted them to last
For collectively they’ve shaped me
into what I am today
Precious to hold onto
as my tomorrow’s seize the day

As a seagull again

7 of 7 in the Jemverse series ‘Shoreham again’

As a seagull I flew inland from the sea
Up in a yellow-tinged sky
Looking down with the freedom I commanded in flight
as I swooped and I soared up on high

I watched as the river meandered below
Through the town I am proud to call home
with its cluster of houses gathered close to the sea
over routes I have so often flown

Caterpillar dawn

Caterpillar dawn
creeps across the ocean

This river again

6 of 7 in the Jemverse series ‘Shoreham again’

In this river’s silted tributaries
Navigation now
Reserved for smallish river craft
Low of beam and bow
And yet, two hundred years ago
Galleons here were made
Crafted beams at Bramber
Where many keels were laid
Such changing times of commerce
The Adur’s here provided
For this fishing port of Shoreham
Which by the sea has long resided

Relativity of Life

bright in gold in jars of silence

who hides in wings of time
ever open in bars of distance
to that omnipresent
relativity of life

Seven Sisters

Sweet sisters Pleiades
Peer out from their nursery nebula
New baby stars
Half the age of the chalk hills
I live upon

Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond

https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/seven-sisters/

Shoreham Airport again

5 of 7 in the Jemverse series ‘Shoreham again’

Shoreham Airport’s terminal building
The oldest in the land
Is getting a new makeover
To make it fresh and grand

It’s 1930’s facade fell into
a terrible state
With peeling paint and cracks in walls
But soon it will look great