Fathoms of microcreatures
that once lived bright lives
in an ancient topographic ocean
died, drifted, finally settled
into dark abyssal depths
in unfathomable time they
dried, were compressed,
eventually uplifted
became the chalk that
now underlies the rich flowery turf
of my beloved hills
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This is a Quadrille, written in response to a prompt on Dverse, where we had to use the word ‘chalk’ somewhere in our poem.
I feel like I have cheated a bit, as many of my poems are about the chalk hills of southern England. For example: