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
Crevasses hide slidden trees
while cliff tops have shed huge rocks
now littered out down below
unstrung Brobdingnagian beads
On this mis-sized jewellers of a beach
quartz and pearled fossils glitter and shine
we scamper over curled dark pools
fish for a sense of perspective
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Stars pooled like milk at zenith
Coloured lights tracking across
Blinking
Deep night swallows all light
Here on the Moor
Stars pooled like milk at zenith
coloured lights tracking across
blinking
Deep night swallows all light
here on the Moor
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
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
Moorland lurks in my soul
skies that bleed rain, seep mist
slant slopes that yearn for sunlight in winter
twilight danger as sharp branched trees close in
a dance with the lowering sky
someone once said it was my altar
my shadow a church spire across bog
Copyright © 2022 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Crevasses hide slidden trees
while cliff tops have shed huge rocks
now littered out below
like unstrung Brobdingnagian beads
On this miss-sized jewellers of a beach
glittering with quartz and pearled fossils
we scamper over curled dark pools
fish for a sense of perspective
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Only Exmoor stretches out to embrace the whole sky in its immensity
Reflects its moods and colours, its nurture and destruction
Only the moor is as fickle as the sky
Today the moor is swallowed as clouds subsume the uplands
Yesterday it shed water like the clouds themselves
Tomorrow it will shimmer with heat, dry and unforgiving
Trees hide in hollows, afraid to stand in the open
Sheep bones litter the spring hillsides
Peaty silty bogs nestle with gorse , bracken and heather
Only Exmoor reaches out to bleed the very rain from the sky
To lie seeming gentle with its folds and billows, green fields abutting the heather
Then to gladly accept the gifts of deadly snow, killing floods, baking heat
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem first appeared in Peacock Journal 2017
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.
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.
The Cheesesellers Wife 