Full Moon seen underwater
as you rise breathless
break the surface in fierce waves
splutter like no fish could, would
Moonlight gleams cold on your skin
as the undertow grabs
drags you to the hard shore
where he doesn’t wait as promised
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Waking up with Nanny in her soft double bed
the room white and pink with swans and roses
Sunday morning and you would bring milky tea
Hot in her best rose gold china cup and saucers
we would sip, little fingers raised as you left
Before we too rose
Later, your Saturday visits to our house
bringing a bounty of colourful comics to read
And a secret pocket of sweets, for Mum not to see
How my brothers and I took you for granted
Never noticed the shining love in your eyes
Your hand grasping mine in supplication
As they wheeled you, protesting to surgery
from which you did not return, your
faltering loving heart finally stopping
Under the anaesthetists care
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
You tread on the tail of my eye
carving crosswise through the crowd
that flows into the station
we greet with hugs, kiss cheeks
talk of our priceless opportunity
of a week together
after so long apart
Later, rinsing sorrow away
we linger out
a hundred glasses of wine
the clarity of close friends filling small talk
a lucid moon keeping us awake
and after we’re drunk, we’ll sleep
all heaven our blanket, earth our pillow
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Inspired by Chinese poetry, this one is for our best friend, away in Amsterdam. Our first trip abroad will be to see him, but we do not know when that can be….
You cuddle up to me in your sleep, comforted by mother warmth
What do you dream little man, my child full of wonder
You exhaust me by day and then enthrall me at your time of sleeping
Always asking for more, lifting my soul and life
Every day is an adventure for us
As I discover the world in and through your eyes
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I wrote this poem when my sons were much much younger….they are both adults now!
Two blue eyes and the tilting of your head
Fourteen when we met
Seventeen in love
Your three rings encompass my fingers
Engagement and Wedding
Yellow sapphire for eternity
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart;
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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 .
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
by William Shakespeare
This sonnet needs to read out loud. It is addressed to a younger lover….
I wave at the man
Smiling in his immensity
Sketched out by mountains and lava flows
And call him friend
He has lit my way home
Coloured my evenings
Lit up my childhood
With dreams of space travel
How many others see him this way
The Man in the Moon?
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For Nesa, who loved this poem of mine, but didn’t see a man in the moon. As she told me in 2016:
“You see a man in the moon. I see a rabbit, crouched down, ears sticking up. Have seen him since I was a child and still watch for him to follow me home.”
We all miss you Nesa, so much……
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
It is my Birthday today…..
The Cheesesellers Wife 