Two lights gleam equally across the snow
The traveller hesitates which way to go . . .
One is a cottage lamp; the other ray
A world four hundred million miles away.
by Theodore Stephanides, who should be familiar to all who love Gerald Durrell‘s “My Family and other Animals”. Theodore was a polymath—-both Doctor and aquatic biologist, and he wrote wonderful poetry.
I’m delighted to tell you that my poem ‘Our Secret’, has been accepted for publication in Crannóg 49, the autumn 2018 edition of Ireland’s premier fiction and poetry magazine since 2002.
By the door of the living room
away from the adults
a girl dances.
Lost in her own world
lost in shadows
dreaming unknown incandescent things
that even now she cannot fathom.
But the echoes of those dances
float across years.
Each subsequent dance
at a wedding or festival
evoking something
until she finds, in middle age
a need and urge to dance again
to feel the echoes, sense the incandescence.
Just once more.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Originally published at (along with Boy Migrant, Watercolour time and The overwhelming sky) at http://www.longshotisland.com/2018/01/26/bridge-poems/
by Leah Bodine Drake
I am out on the wind
In the wild, black night;
On the wings of the owl
I take my flight,
On the ghostly wings of the great white owl;
And whether the night be fair or foul,
Or the moon be up or the thunder growl,
Happy I be,
Happy I be
When the changeling blood runs green in me!
When meek folk sleep
In their dull, soft beds,
I creep over roots
That the weasel treads,
Where the squat green lamps of the toadstools glow —
And only the fox knows the ways I go,
And nobody knows the things I know. . . .
Wise I be,
Wise I be
When the changeling blood runs green in me!
O Mother, slumber
And do not wake! . . .
Thin voices called
From the rain-wet brake,
And the child you cradled against your breast
Is out in the night on the black wind’s crest,
For only the wild can give me rest. . . .
Sad I be,
Sad I be
When the changeling blood runs green in me
My rolling road smooths over the hills
reveals a distant farm house
hazy gray, huddled in trees
we roll on and the farm folds away
gone into green.
As it did
when Vikings rode past
hunting for spoils, women and food
when the Revenue came later
searching for tax payers.
This land is ancient
holdings forged millennia ago
only when warfare encompassed the air
was this farms safety broached.
Yet bombers passed over to pit and hole
to blast and burn
the farm house remained
snuggled into the land.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Edited from a version published here in June 2016
Maybe we are not players on a stage
But in an orchestra
Each with a part to play
Integral to the whole
They tell us to aim high
Lead role, boss, the one and only
First violin
But so many of us thrive without the spotlight
The pedestal
What is a orchestra without a third row?
Empty.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I posted a long time ago about the beuaty and poetry of many song lyrics. Just appraciate the rhythm and effortless rhyme of the incomparable Billy Braggs ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’:
It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro’s brother spies a rich lady who’s crying
Over luxury’s disappointment
So he walks over and he’s trying
To sympathize with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner
In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr. Robert Oppenheimer’s optimism fell
At the first hurdle
In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer
Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I’m looking for the great leap forwards
Jumble sales are organized
And pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there’s still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you’re waiting for the great leap forwards
One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?
Here comes the future and you can’t run from it
If you’ve got a blacklist I want to be on it
It’s a mighty long way down rock ‘n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole
If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman
In a perfect world we’d all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room
So join the struggle while you may
The revolution is just a tee shirt away
Waiting for the great leap forwards
by Billy Bragg
Songwriter: STEPHEN WILLIAM BRAGG
© Universal Music Publishing Group
I remember Pogo-ing and yelling the lyrics at many a Bragg gig…….
Orignal Video:
Updated lyrics and performance at
My poem ‘Capture’ is now published in the new issue of London Grip New Poetry
http://londongrip.co.uk/2018/09/london-grip-new-poetry-autumn-2018/#hammond
The title page for the whole edition is on line at http://londongrip.co.uk/2018/09/london-grip-new-poetry-autumn-2018/
Geeting the cold sholder form a Terracota Warrior…..
(I was practising getting some texture into my paintings)
She came to see me
Resplendent in red
Glittering with dust
Her elegant bone structure evident more than ever
Desiccated and dead
Spacesuit blown
Floating past the view screen
When I know we retrieved her from orbit yesterday
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Originally published in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Associations print journal Star*Line 40.4 October 2017 http://www.sfpoetry.com/sl/issues/starline40.4.html
