Beauty sans charm may captivate
But does not last, for look
It’s merely like the fishing boat
That floats without the hook
By Capito (around 600BC)
This poem is from the Dover edition: Great Short Poems (Ed Dorothy Belle Pollack)
Tag Archives: beauty
Caterpillar Dawn
Caterpillar dawn
creeps across the ocean
slithers into night’s domain
eating the dark
Chrysalis clouds and rain
obscure daylights return
but butterfly day
will spread her wings
ragged and soft to begin
stiffening into glory
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Seven Sisters
Sweet sisters Pleiades
Peer out from their nursery nebula
New baby stars
Half the age of the chalk hills
I live upon
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Melody
Your notes fly through my innermost existence
talk of longing and love
melody tears at my contentment
what little there is of it
Your weave emotions and regret into
a fabric impervious to reason
blanketing me
smothering drowning
Taking
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Broken Cable
In the middle of the bright Atlantic
Floating on the swell between island volcanoes
Beneath reflective surface tension
Silvered gas bubbles catch the light
And, across the issuing rift
A long snake of data cable
Broken sheared twisted
As the gas breaks the surface
We hear voices
Blogs bubbling to the top
Instructions to buy or sell
A thousand tiny voices
Sparkling in the sunshine
Several parrot fish swim by
Next day when snorkeling
I fancy I hear fish blogging
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was published by the wonderful Helen Ivory on Ink, Sweat and Tears: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=12491
Moorland
High on the moor is a special silence
Broken by decoying skylarks
Ponies breast a rise
Sheep appear from the bracken
Our footsteps loud on the rutted path
Under lowering cloud
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Shodo
Art and philosophy
Elegant, sparse, fluid
With singular precision
Product of a moment
Product of a life’s practice
Product of the ages
Open to all with the time and open focus
Pad left open, pen laid down
Beauty and meaning await
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Inscribed on the Wall of an Inn North of Ta-yü Mountain by Sung Chih-wen
The last line of this poem is echoing through my mind this afternoon……
They say that wildgeese, flying southward,
Here turn back, this very month . . .
Shall my own southward journey
Ever be retraced, I wonder?
. . . The river is pausing at ebb-tide,
And the woods are thick with clinging mist—
But tomorrow morning, over the mountain,
Dawn will be white with the plum-trees of home.
translated by Witter Bynner & Kiang Kang-hu
Mont St Michel
A swagger of towering stuff
busts up from tidal flats
incised with causeway
swarmed with tourists
On that far off day
we avoided the queues for
legendary omelettes
headed up, entered
the original heart of this isle
swooping arches
carved pilasters
holy serenity
soothed and warmed us
readied us for the hordes below
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
There are never enough photos of Pico
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, about my favourite mountain, Mount Pico in the Azores.
