Refreshingly grey day
Cars softly swish past
Light staccato rain
Washing the world clean
Bejewelling my windows
Where muted light
Shines in stopped droplets
Gently loosing blossoms
And wiping them away
Rinsing down new leaves
Dripping from bent over grasses
Soaking the seed bed
Sparking spring growth
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Bright Dandelions and Celandine
blaze in the strong sunshine
yet in the shadows pale Primrose
simply sits and gently glows
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I sit on the stairs
of another woman’s house
one I love deeply
my mother was the star to her
rockfast grace and kindness
but stars burn out and die
Wilma still shines
her back may be bent but
her eyes glow
this house was sanctuary
and freedom to me
the love she and hers gave me
gentle and calm
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Reblogged from last year in memory of Wilma Pegler, who died last night .She was my Mums best friend for 70 years.
I loved her .
This isn’t poetry, just me being indulgent on a Sunday night….….again….
I was born in London, went to university in London and still love my home town, even though I will never live there again.
A little sometting to remind me of Londons wonderful parks:
I grab my pencils, mostly old and blunt,
scramble for a sharpener, my sketchbook
then connect to Zoom
run hands through unruly hair,
so long now in lockdown,
clean my glasses with my clothes.
The class begins. This week it’s
Maxine from Greece, his lithe body
first reaching and arching upwards
back turned coyly to the camera
we have ten minutes only to capture
the length and proportion of limbs,
that pert bottom,
not that I notice it,
the way every knee has a front, a face
and it must be drawn right.
Use the light and shadows to
give heft and bulk, says our tutor in Germany,
embolden key lines to make your drawing stand out.
The pose changes, now he drapes himself across a chair
one leg stretching out to the lens
and I grimace at the challenge of foreshortening
making his leg look as if it is coming out of my page
I try to see the shapes, the curve of his torso here
a triangle of negative space there
how his knee is on the same level as his nose.
All too soon, Maxime bids his farewells as we clap
then we show our various efforts to each other.
After each class, I am always tired
drained with the effort of trying to
achieve a human body on my grubby page.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.
There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.
There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.
There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.
There’s a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.
How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?
Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.
Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.
There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.
There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.
Copyright © 2017 by Amanda Gorman. Reprinted from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Database.
An original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress.
Grey is nothing
The dead zone between black and white
Grey is age
The old road surface, the unwanted hair
Gray is the softness of pregnant cloud
Gray puts on her evening dress
And goes dancing
Using her alter ego, silver
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
A brilliant poem by Colin Hill. Enjoy….
Eyes of amber
the persistence of vision
every heart a doorway
Exhalation
Palimpsest
a deepness in the sky
the water that falls on you from nowhere
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This is a found poem of sorts, the lines are titles of Hugo Award Nominees.
I know a funny little man,
As quiet as a mouse,
Who does the mischief that is done
In everybody’s house.
There’s no one ever sees his face,
And yet we all agree
That every plate we break was cracked
By Mr., Nobody
‘Tis he who always tears our books,
who leaves our doors ajar;
he pulls the buttons from our shirts,
and scatters pins afar,
that squeaking door will always squeak,
because of this you see:
we leave the oiling to be done
by Mr Nobody.
He puts damp wood upon the fire,
So kettles cannot boil;
His are the feet that bring in mud
And all the carpets soil.
The papers always are mislaid,
Who had them last but he?
There’s no one tosses them about
But Mr. Nobody
