I’m delighted to tell you that my poem ‘Only Exmoor’ has been published at Poetry and Places:
Poetry and Places is a site that shares travel adventures and celebrates our planet through poetry.
Tag Archives: exmoor
Standing on Dunkery
Any hill will do
They all are sacred, but
Dunkery at twilight
As mist seeps up from
Purple heather
Horizons broaden out
And valleys settle into shadow
Sheep bleat, asking for their land back
But we walk the broad path
To a scattered mound of stone
Skirting nervous wild ponies
As the sun paints them golden
Ponies never ask, it is always theirs
As it belonged to the mound builders
Five thousand years ago
As it belongs
And doesn’t belong
To us all
But especially tonight
To me and mine
Copyright © 2020 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Written in response to this weeks EarthWeal challenge “Sacred Landscapes“. Exmoor is very special and it’s highest point, Dunkery Beacon, even more so.
Lights : A Speculative poem
Moonlight feathers treetops
reveals hill slopes, shadows gullies
sketches out my beautiful Exmoor.
Lone headlights angle skywards on the west horizon
twisting along the high road.
I watch at the window on this cold night
as the car winds along towards us
praying
(to however may
or may not be listening)
that traitor Moon
will not glint on my rifle barrel.
Gripping the gun with amateurs nerves,
I reach for Eva’s hand
and we hold our breath while
a child cries fitfully in the house.
We all have broken sleep in these remaining days.
We eke out, stand watch, wait.
For what? For a quiet death perhaps.
But in the day we want very much to live
so we tend straggling sheep, shoot rabbit,
go on.
Fear clutches my gut as the car turns past empty houses
and down along our valley road,
and a form of relief washes us as it continues on
following the river to richer pickings in the southern towns.
I move my baby to feed at my other breast
and mourn the futures stolen from her,
the violence awaiting.
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
‘Lights’ was first published in The Future Fire: http://press.futurefire.net/2019/05/new-issue-201949.html
Stone in the Water
Deep plunge pool in the heart of the moor
Centred in spring time unfurling of bracken
Shadowed by a twisted thorn tree
Water pours in over a mossy lip
Large pebbles line the sloping
Glowing colours in crystal water
Something falls
Breaks the surface
Circles upon circles radiate
Contours ripple to a point of disappearance
Sparkle in the dawn light
Stone in the water
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Re-blogged from 2016.
Rain on the moor
Here on the moor
Rain closes you down
Takes away the horizon
Soaks and settles
Creates hazards
Can flood and kill
Rain lashes at the face
Stinging like needles
Sends cold tendrils down the neck
Seeps into all things
Deepens bogs and fords
Hides the path from view
A rainy day on the moor
Be it drizzle or a squall
Leaves you slipping and tumbling
Heading for shelter
Dripping at the pub or tearoom door
Grateful for the warm and dry
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
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
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 © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
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We live on the high ground
We live on the high ground
Below us the water tumbles and falls, jumping over buried rocks
Water criss-crosses the land eventually falling to the sea
Life is good here on the high, fresh soil and clear water
Healthy children, full bellies, long lives
Yesterday we sowed seed, laughing and singing
Today the sun is warm and the birds are singing for me
I try to put the birdsong into speech
As we knap flints from the coast
Mother is drawing a circle on the turf near the Family stones
A circle stones of to encompass Grandmother who closes in to death
We will cover her in the soil of home to keep her with us
Here on the high ground
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Originally published in Three Drops from a Cauldron: Issue 11
Two poems published in Total Eclipse
I’m really happy to tell you that my poems ‘The Moor and the Sky ’ and ‘Bone Moon’ have been published in the first issue of Total Eclipse.
Total Eclipse is a literary journal based in Pittsburgh, PA
structured by nature and our multifaceted relationships
with nature; magically real experience; and the meditative
appreciation of all things natural.
A Print issue can be ordered at:
https://totaleclipsepittsburgh.weebly.com/
….and you can scroll through a digital version at the site above and read my poems on page 48.
Thank you to the editor Mark Sepe and best wishes to him in this new endeavour.
Places of Poetry
Colin Hill has found a great poetry project :
https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk/
—It’s open to all and aims to use “creative writing to prompt reflection on national and cultural identities in England and Wales, celebrating the diversity, heritage and personalities of place.”
The site is open for writers to pin their poems to places from 31st May to 4 October 2019. It will then be closed for new poems but will remain available for readers.
I have pinned these poems of mine on the map:
Farm (pinned near Didcot)
Picking up the Cheeses (pinned at Iwerne Minster in Dorset)
Rat Trap (pinned in North Hillingdon)
Glaslyn (pinned at Lake Glaslyn near Lllanidloes, Mid-Wales)
At Stratford with William (pinned at Stratford upon Avon)
Fellow Traveller (pinned in the middle of Exmoor)
Um, yes I think I got a bit carried away….have you got some poems to pin there????
