Let’s dance cry russet leaves
that whirl, spin and flutter
Let’s dance shouts thunder
to his parner the lightning
Let’s dance says the tornado
as she waltzes along
through an unprepared island
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem tells of an unexpected tornado this week on the Isle of Wight here in England. It has been written in response to Rebeccas September Poetry Challenge over at :
The tornado can be seen on the BBC:
Precipitation within sight
Rain, drizzle, mizzle
Soft weather, mucky weather
‘The Smoky Smirr o Rain’
Liquid sunshine
Slow words, gentle
But it was spitting this morning
Pitter patter, splash, splish, splodge, squelch
And it bucketed down last night
A torrent, raining cats and dogs
Not a light soaking rain
Squalling, hailing and sleeting
Flooding, flowing, swamping
A deluge chucking it down
Drowning
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Humid air, popped with energy
soaks empty sky where
clouds breed like
virus in a host
then
darken, roil, and
infect the evening
with thunder
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was inspired by the quote from Breakfast at Tiffanys : “It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.”
It was compsed and posted ii response to a prompt over at Dverse.
Sunken sky drunk with carbon
looms as heat encloses
the future beckons
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Written in reponse to
Tuesday Twiglet #279
~ sunken sky ~
I am smelling spring flowers on the wind
braving weather and poetry
on a stormy day
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Smoky tendrils reach out to sunlit waters
As Baltic sea mist creeps to Helsinki
Coming to market for Cloud berries perhaps
Ferries leave Market Square and slowly disappear
Once at our island destination
(A cold journey with no sights to see)
The jetty is disembodied
Fragmentary in fog
Walking reveals low rocky terrain
Suddenly a sunlit beach
From where we watch
A second larger island slowly appear
On a journey out of the haze
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
On the graveyard shift, we chase weather
parse our charts, work the numbers
issue warnings, brief pilots
wait for our relief to turn up
and then that blessed walk outside
into whatever we had been predicting
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
For just over one month many years ago, I worked shifts as a Weather Forecaster at Birmingham Airport…..
It has rained again
And the soil exudes a scent
As a child, when the air was redolent with coffee
Then we knew it would rain
Away from the factories
I have found that oncoming rain smells of earth
Pre-petrichor perhaps
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Refreshingly grey day
Cars softly swish past
Light staccato rain
Washing the world clean
Bejewelling my windows
Where muted light
Shines in stopped droplets
Gently loosing blossoms
And wiping them away
Rinsing down new leaves
Dripping from bent over grasses
Soaking the seed bed
Sparking spring growth
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
The Cheesesellers Wife 