Splashing as a child in the Channel’s cold waters
snorkeling over a Red Sea reef
tasting the Baltic and finding it sweet
rather than salt
The glitter path of an Azorean setting sun
North Sea mists drifting onto land
winter gales foaming the Cornish sea
all cameos of a life on this watery planet
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
First published 2017
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.
Swaying bobbing we peer through the hull
Eagle Rays swish beneath us chasing the unknown
Light glints on a startled shoal sashaying across the rocks
Gas bubbles up from volcanic clefts
Crabs glance sideways, looking for the main chance
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Something bright and colourful for summer. Not one of my best, but I like the way the reflections work…..
Painted in watercolours.
I’m delighted to say that two of my poems have been published online by Fourth and Sycamore:
There are never enough photos of Pico
Says he, as he takes yet one more
The light has changed again
And the mountain looks about to roar
We’ve flown over and around her
Driven along her lower slopes
But the best view is away from her
From little Horta’s shore
The mountain slumbers on
Fuji slopes gracefully curving down
She glows rose in the dawns light
By midday she can glower and frown
Clouds drape her and embrace her
Shadowing scree and walled in grapevine
However far we travel away from her
Somehow that volcano is always mine
Copyright © 2015 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Re-blogged from 2015
Deep in a volcanic sea cave
crimson crabs hang from the ceiling
scuttle along walls, clattering pincers
gather in their hundreds
in affront
as our boat noses in,
engine stilled.
We have raced across open ocean
slamming over waves
to be claustrophobically enclosed
looked down upon by crustaceans
never before have I felt
such an visitor to my own planet
insignificant in the face of the whale and the dolphin
and now these outraged crabs.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
In the bay
A furious scrum of fishes
Contesting over I know not what
Eagle rays glide above
Between islands
Atlantic swell buffets
Dolphins sway and swerve
Deep below me
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Re-blogged from 2016….
A road to the central volcano of Faial island in the Azores, lined with blue Hyrandgea flowers:
Moonlight has banished an ocean of stars,
pouring molten silver across the water.
Murmuring waves remember a primal ocean,
write poetry in their foam,
erase the day from a busy beach.
A harsh breeze crashes across treetops
as if breaking on a coral reef
and distant sea-birds call evenings end,
sharp disembodied sentinels of the night.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
