Reading on a screen is a hollow sham
Handling a real book
Feeling it’s weight
Looking at its cover
(Often old fashioned)
Turning paper pages
The way a second hand poetry book
Can fall open at a poem
That was once loved
And repeatedly read
By a stranger
All pleasure
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
A falling man
knows his
I reach out
gingerly
to a future
made by choices
not all of them
mine
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The Third of three………..
Time’s linear line
always onward
when did this future
become my present?
a gift I didn’t want
but cannot
ever
return
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The second of three…………
Bodies move forward
yet minds can wander back
to sepia times
black and white beginnings
past loves
not so ancient terrors
the present
is a gift
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The first of three…………
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
By Margaret Atwood.
So short, consise and powerful. Genius.
This clump of small trees conceals a secret,
steep rock scattered slope sliding into black
amongst long tangled roots.
A high tunnel, arching roof, sharp cutting surfaces,
rock drips hanging,
umbilical cord sinuously writhing down
into volcanic depths now empty
silent and still.
Liquid rock ran here once,
the rock around us the scum that floated
on a glowing river extruding into up above
reaching out with fiery devils fingers
grasping at fields and lives.
Night is a cavern, a tunnel to the depths,
it can be littered with fears
haunted by worries, swamped by unslept sleep.
This primordial dark, this barren silence
is filled by the hammering of our hearts.
An apocalypse that is long gone into history,
still we feel the presence of subterranean death
hear disaster echoing across time.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Published at Fourth and Sycamore in July 2018.
Grey wash of cloud
lids the day
brings some vague warmth
to this week
headline news staggers from
crisis to dismay
heads down, we all carry on
trying not to believe
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
–this video gets me in the mood for Christmas.
Merry Christmas Everybody!
A great poem from Sarah Russell. Here, in an English winter, the Dandelions are still strutting their stuff across my back lawn.
Spike-haired, brass-blonde,
they invade the bluegrass suburbs
where blades form a passive sameness
if tended as intended. They strut
across the green of everyday —
strumpets in tattered leafy skirts,
stiletto roots — bestowing downy favors
on the summer breeze.
– Sarah Russell
First published in Your Daily Poem
Photo Source
We wade though the bright grass
Tired, footsore, happy
Hearing a bird calling by the reeds
Notes curling amongst themselves,
Spinning through the warm air
Distantly, traffic busies itself,
Here, tranquility reigns,
After a full night dancing,
We walk.
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
