Herepath
Wide as ten men abreast
The old military road
Cuts between farms
Dips down to the river
Rises up over the moor
Rabbits lollop along it
Lambs bleat in fields beside it
Rosebay glows at sunset
Where were the wars that you marched to?
What were the victories that you won?
Here on the old Herepath
The road truly goes ever on
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I’m very pleased to have a poem in the latest issue of the excellent “Three Drops from a Cauldron”. My poem was inspired by a hut circle above a tiny valley on Exmoor.
Welcome to Issue 11, the first one of 2017, and the changeover issue to our now-monthly, new-format web journal.
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Crying the moor
Sedge and moss, peat and grass
Cover the uplands
Sheep run from us, cattle simply watch
Clouds scud past, rain threatens
Stone track turns to muddy path
As we descend to the combe
Past the ruins, past the ponies
Towards the burble of falling water
The fluidity that carved the hill folds
The agent that governs this landscape
Made manifest in Hollocombe Water
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Exmoor Evening
Bone cold moon lifts over a sheep fold
Lights fleeces
Illuminates walkers breasting the darkening hill
Who pause to watch the suns display
As its fire sinks behind Dunkery Beacon
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Fellow Traveller
Drowsing on the wayside
Halfway through our walk
We are stopped
Something rustles and I open my eyes
Raise my head
There in the red tipped grasses of the moor
Stands a doe, ears twitching
Black liquid eyes gazing into mine
Two creatures on the uplands
We exchange something in that moment
Before the nearby bleat of a sheep
Startles us each
And the moment and doe are both gone
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Exmoor walk
Struggling to negotiate the downslope
Heading for the water in its gorge
In the vain hope of finding good treading
And the avoidance of the long horned cattle
That so trouble my son
Past a tumbled ruin, stones in the ankle twisting bracken
To where the water foams over shallow falls
Then spreads like treacle over luminous depths
There is walking here, trapped between the water
And a surprisingly intact dry stone wall
A path eventually appears and takes us up again
Across the brow of the great wide hill
Where slow worms and snakes bask on the path edge
Down to a wider valley, stream, thorn trees, more ruins
Where sheep and wild ponies graze
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Exmoor hedge
The Exmoor hedge is wildly strange
Who would plant trees on the top of a dry stone wall?
All across the moorlands and bogs
Overgrown hedgerows clamber and sprawl
Lambs and foals owe to the hedge
Winds are faltered by the sheltering trees
In a pitiless landscape
Animals and birds look for the leaves
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
