Tag Archives: Fantasy

And so it goes

December 15, 2021dragon, Fantasy, poem, Poetrydragon, Fantasy, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Dragon leaps cloud to cloud
wings beaten from the Milky Way
lands amongst startled stars
and worlds wind roars
trees fall unheard
as the great Earth tilts

My edible home has no gingerbread

November 20, 2021Fantasy, poem, Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, poem, poetry, speculative poetry, witchThe Cheesesellers Wife

Its colours are cold and serious
and the clocks stopped a long time ago

Being alone for a long time
I have started to listen differently

Everything turns outward
but I turn up in all the wrong places

The witch is never dead
just sitting lonely in her edible home

My Cheese seller challenged me to write a poem with this title…….

Midsummer White

June 20, 2021dragon, Fantasy, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, midsummer, poem, poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetry, summer, uffington white horseThe Cheesesellers Wife

The ancient one, birthed in another age
beak mouthed, strangely skeletal
peels away from her verdant slope
stutters stonily on tiny hooves
shakes dust from ethereal flanks
nuzzles her impalpable foal

She who once pulled the chariot of the Sun
wakes on this eve of dreams
gallops over hill and vale
bone stone cold creature
looming, outsized, lumpy
she sails over hedgerows
scatters cattle and chickens
sets farm dogs barking
pet dogs to cower

She will break over you like an ocean wave
roll you over and under in your midsummer dreaming
refreshing or drowning, you make your choice, take your chance

Rosy fingered dawn will return her
stiffening to the high slopes
she settles creaking into green
back to the land

For now

If you stand in the valley near the village of Uffington in Oxfordshire and look up at the high curve of chalk grassland above, you can see an enormous white, abstract stick figure horse cut into the grass. She has a sweeping body, a round eye set in a square head, a beak. and an invisible foal (you’ll have to trust me on that last one).

This is the Uffington White Horse, a 3,000-year-old pictogram visible from 20 miles away.

Once every hundred years the Uffington horse gallops across the sky to be reshod by Wayland in his smithy, just along the Ridgeway track. This is said to have last happened in around 1920. Maybe Wayland waits for her tonight……

This poem was written for the Earthweal Weekly Challenge.

My poem ‘She Lingers’ has been published

June 19, 2021Fantasy, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetryAmerican Diversity Report, Fantasy, poem, poetry, published poem, Science Fiction Poetry, speculative poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

I’m very pleased to tell you that I have another poem published!

My poem ‘She Lingers’ has been published in the summer 2021 poetry issue of American Diversity Report

She lingers by Kim Whysall-Hammond

Thank you to John C. Mannone for taking this poem — which was written after a walk on Ham Hill in Berkshire this last January.

Woman and Ocean

February 27, 2021Fantasy, poem, Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, mermaid, Ocean, poem, poetry, speculative poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Fins cut rippling wounds through waves
dolphins surf, joyous and calling
a girl treads water in the backwash
waves and beckons to me as
as I watch from the beach
she turns to swim
a scaled tail leaps and glistens
winking

A plunge and she is gone
to play with her friends below

Dark Land

December 28, 2019Fantasy, nature, poem, Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, nature, poem, poetry, speculative poetry, spookyThe Cheesesellers Wife

Night has come
the land is dark
waiting for moonrise

Owl trembles in her branches
rabbit watches from her hole
vixen eyes the shape before her

Something moves brokenly
twists and turns
into a new form

Screams in anguish
agony and terror
as moonlight strikes

There is an English tradition for ghost and spooky stories at Christmas and New Year.

Friday Poem: All that is gold does not glitter

July 5, 2019Fantasy, Friday Poem, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction PoetryFantasy, Friday Poem, glitter, gold, J R R Tolkien, kingThe Cheesesellers Wife

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

by J R R Tolkien

The Colour of Dragons

April 19, 2019Amsterdam, art, dragon, Fantasy, poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetryart, Berlin, dragon, dragons, Eastercon, Fandom, Fantasy, London, Paris, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

The colour of dragons
Depends

Sweet green for new hatchlings
To hide in high grasses

Black and red for an Emperor
Or a burner of crops
Many turn as gold as their treasure
Perhaps part of ageing

What colour a city dragon
Lurking on rooftops?

In Paris, creamy white as the buildings
In Berlin and London
Perhaps a glassy hue
Criss-crossed

In Amsterdam?
Turquoise and purple
With scarlet undertones………

I’m at Eastercon (the UK national Science Fiction convention) this weekend, with paintings in the Art Show……..

Poem : Our Secret

April 13, 2019Fantasy, poem, Poetry, speculative poetryFantasy, poem, poetry, published poem, speculative poetry, timeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Take the third turn over there
by the weeping willow at the barren stream.
Turn sharp now into brightness
or you will miss the crease,
that flaw in time’s weave you must push through
(sometimes my shoulder gets stuck, but I persevere).
Once through, stay low, part and peer through high grasses
watch the herds roll past.
Tusks upraised, immense cinnamon woolly hulks,
regally righteous, grassland behemoths,
lords of the plains
(yes, indeed, the land is flatter here that it was back now).
Be ready for the noise when they cry out,
it reverberates all through your bones
oscillating ears to numbness.
The hulk and bulk of them is prodigious
and worth the squeeze.
Whether it is worth the panic
when you finally realise
the directions home are missing?