November, and we walk a track
that winds along the chalk escarpment
winter thrushes throng empty fields
scavenging for food
their calls sparkle the air
This year has taken much
but not yet the fresh air
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Category Archives: Life
Old Lady
We need more poems about getting old. Here is a wonderful one from Glenys:
Old lady blood problems
old lady pills.
Tiny toes dangle
from huge balloon feet.
Stretch marks cross my shin bones,
feet and ankles vanish.
Old lady giant ankles
more old lady pills.
Old people clipboard forms,
old people ‘flu jabs.
All line the waiting room
old people recovery time.
Old lady walks to town
fit as fit can be.
Old lady taxi home
after two hours’ shopping.
In my mind
I am middle aged
but my body keeps doing
old lady deeds.
Previously posted April 2016.
Recluse
People drain, push through
boundaries, demand attention.
Childhood reclused with book after book
reading to the exclusion of most else,
an interior life but for the
vibrancy of a sunset, the thrill
of abstraction in flowing water
and then, at seventeen,
the bright blue art of your eyes.
The world and you, my love, stimulate
refresh, make me whole
give me myself once more.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
As the UK goes into lockdown once more, this poem may explain why I really don’t mind about that…..
Farm
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
Changeling
Once we climbed hills in a breath
contemplated clouds as
fantastic ruins on the horizon
Now you are silent, I don’t know
what light your eyes see
Wind and sea both murmur
the poetry of things insinuates
into our hearts.
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Careful!
I have to carry myself carefully
as I did when a small child prone to tripping
carrying flowers for Grandma
held tight in both hands
all along the road, almost to the moon
it felt, admonished to be careful
continually.
Clumsy they called me, lackadaisical
cack-handed
but my feet turned in
and a treatment had been refused
I have returned to my start it seems
after a fall in the dark
and a crack to the head
this wavering shaky plod
rather than that old vivid
stumbling run
makes me clumsy again
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Friday Poem: Everything is Going to be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
by Derek Mahon,from Selected Poems
Dereck died on 1st October 2020.
This poem was a consolation and an inspiration to me at the beginning of the UK lockdown.
Time washes all clean
Washed ashore
bathed in pouring light
dissolving into sky
swashing across mud flats
in an infinity of loss
I am many and alone.
Vampire clouds gather above
come to subsume my part
into the whole.
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
‘Time washes all clean’ was first published in Issue 39 of the Irish poetry magazine ‘ The Blue Nib’ in September 2019
Storage issues
Images of distant snowmen
long melted and gone
haunt my eyes.
The heat of other summers
warms my skin
as my feet try to kick through
thirty year old fallen leaves.
It seems my memories are filling my senses.
Is this what is means to grow old?
I have many years yet to go
much more time to forge more memories.
This storage crisis needs to end.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Winding Road
The winding road I walk
wanders through country hedges
stuffed full of brambles and bomb-weed
across hay meadows to where
gauze mist veils distant hills.
Rust red cows huddle by a gate
tails swishing away flies
and rooks shout from their rookery
hurling bird banter from tall tree to tall tree.
Later the Sun will lower down to the west
shadows will merge and meld
owls will hunt. But now
rabbits nibble in golden light
and a peace settles deep inside.
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The weird font is due to my struggles with the new block editor. 