London Heathrow

March 25, 2023London, poemLondon, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Even fifty miles out
in the predawn I hear
the great jets lowering
readying to land
amid lights, busyness and bustle

I grew up close by
deafened slightly
captured wholly
by your dirty glamour

Orphan

March 22, 2023poem, Poetrypoem, poetry, published poemThe Cheesesellers Wife

Poetry is the orphan of silence
Begging for attention
Word spaces and line breaks
Her crutches

Whatever the poem describes to you
Is a shadow
A portion, a flavour
Of what the poet is trying to say

This poem was first published at: https://vitabrevisliterature.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/orphan/

Drifts

March 18, 2023poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetrypoem, poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Nebulaic drift of space glows pregnant with stars
Pulsates with unseen radiation, reflects light upon broken hulls
Billowing gases thread through holes laced by stellar blasts
Huge gas pillars glow with the light from star birth

Strange shapes eclipse the details of nebulaic magnificence
Ships riddled by particle winds after a disaster deep in spacetime
Now drift in loose orbits within a mystery, artefacts lost to sentience and story
Deep in the cloud lies a graveyard drifting to gravity’s pale tune

Gas jets burst from infant stars, glow in unseen colours
Shoot forth ionized subatomic debris
Push against torn metal, shifting orbits, prompting collisions
Against desiccated limbs, simulating life once more

The beings who struggled and died here disassociate and powder to dust
Microbes drift and seed, await rebirth in planetary clouds
Amino acids alter with the alien input
Nucleotides drift forward to the future

Ghost DNA haunts the spaces between worlds
Drifts onto comet sand meteors
Drops into planetary atmospheres
Visits us tonight as it has done before

This poem was first published at: https://inbetweenhangovers.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/drifts-by-kim-whysall-hammond/

Study in Yellow

March 15, 2023nature, poem, Poetry, springtimenature, poem, poetry, springThe Cheesesellers Wife

Pale primrose lies by the chicken pen
Bold Daffodils stand up in the border
Screaming Marsh Marigold calls from the pond
Subtle oranges somehow manage to cool down the tubbed Narcissi
Spring yells yellow in my garden

Abstract

March 11, 2023nature, poem, PoetryLife, nature, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Silvered gas bubbles catch the light
above the oak leaves do not stir

I’m blurry in the viewfinder
with a days full tears

walls of clear glass listen
bring distant shouts to my ear

I cannot now remember her clasping
the wound of hunger and hard work

Tired of it all

March 8, 2023Life, nature, poem, PoetryLife, nature, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Tired of it all
I close my eyes

yet few in this world hear it
see my hills

feel and taste their
ancient language
that waits for us all

His Pencil

March 4, 2023art, Life, love, memory, poem, Poetryart, Dad, Life, love, memory, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

It is missing him I can tell
mourning his deft touch, firm but gentle hold

It has been in the filing cabinet drawer
in a muddle of discarded stationery
since the world
as I planned it
ended

It asks for Dad, but I cannot say where he is
instead I ask it about the last drawing it made
and it trembles, remembering pudgy three year old fingers
clutching it as they outlined a tigers sharp teeth

I was hoping for a memory of Dads art
as most of it is as gone
as he is

Then it tells me of the many years
stuffed in a drawer of tools
in the house I grew up in
where it and Dad
learned to forget what they had done together
in that glowing youth of expectations
and dreams

All too soon I will be older than
Dad was when he was taken
in the meantime his pencil and I
make new memories

Dizzy with Time

March 1, 2023Life, love, poem, PoetryLife, love, poem, poetry, published poemThe Cheesesellers Wife

Dust motes in sunlight freckle your face
as we kiss deep in bracken on a Welsh hill
a long way from home.
I will leave my bag there
to be retrieved in darkness and laughter
long hours later.
If I had to describe this
it would be joy crackling in heat
dizzy with all the time in the world.

This poem was first published by Oddball, in December 2021

Did rain ever engender a monster so?

February 25, 2023poem, Poetryfrankenstein, mary shelley, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Rain in Geneva
no place to go
no time alone with those egos
too long with Byron
and the risk that

Frustrated that he cannot seduce you
he may go for your husband instead
no loss you think
as you weary of his tales that always come back to
his exploits

Who proposed ghost stories?
you don’t need ghosts
you are trapped with a monster
trapped, telling tales to a mad man
so you trap time
make something transcendent
a myth for our times

We are all Frankensteins children

For Mary Shelley

That awful beauty of standing alone

February 22, 2023Life, poem, Poetryfuture, Life, night, poem, poetry, solitudeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Always night
made starless by neon
all converges upon you
all sinks deep into your eyes
silence has a shadow

the past spreads out
you walk forward into it