Full Moon seen underwater
as you rise breathless
break the surface in fierce waves
splutter like no fish could, would
Moonlight gleams cold on your skin
as the undertow grabs
drags you to the hard shore
where he doesn’t wait as promised
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Waking up with Nanny in her soft double bed
the room white and pink with swans and roses
Sunday morning and you would bring milky tea
Hot in her best rose gold china cup and saucers
we would sip, little fingers raised as you left
Before we too rose
Later, your Saturday visits to our house
bringing a bounty of colourful comics to read
And a secret pocket of sweets, for Mum not to see
How my brothers and I took you for granted
Never noticed the shining love in your eyes
Your hand grasping mine in supplication
As they wheeled you, protesting to surgery
from which you did not return, your
faltering loving heart finally stopping
Under the anaesthetists care
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
You tread on the tail of my eye
carving crosswise through the crowd
that flows into the station
we greet with hugs, kiss cheeks
talk of our priceless opportunity
of a week together
after so long apart
Later, rinsing sorrow away
we linger out
a hundred glasses of wine
the clarity of close friends filling small talk
a lucid moon keeping us awake
and after we’re drunk, we’ll sleep
all heaven our blanket, earth our pillow
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Inspired by Chinese poetry, this one is for our best friend, away in Amsterdam. Our first trip abroad will be to see him, but we do not know when that can be….
You cuddle up to me in your sleep, comforted by mother warmth
What do you dream little man, my child full of wonder
You exhaust me by day and then enthrall me at your time of sleeping
Always asking for more, lifting my soul and life
Every day is an adventure for us
As I discover the world in and through your eyes
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
I wrote this poem when my sons were much much younger….they are both adults now!
Two blue eyes and the tilting of your head
Fourteen when we met
Seventeen in love
Your three rings encompass my fingers
Engagement and Wedding
Yellow sapphire for eternity
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
by William Shakespeare
This sonnet needs to read out loud. It is addressed to a younger lover….
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
It is my Birthday today…..
As once we learnt the grammar of marriage
Entanglements of love and domesticity
Now we study the syntax of ageing
Imperative aches, significant meanings
We plan journeys we have yet to take
Embark on the greatest challenge of all
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Moon dust pervades our lives
Giant steps were what we took
When we started aged seventeen
We have spent happy times on this moon
Half walking half bouncing
Across the years
On or under, we are gleeful lunatics
Still glorious in our love
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
It is a series of fond stories and memories
starting with its absence and the mothers who
would not countenance our engagement without a ring.
Then the jewellers assistant who pointed out the best of the cheap
“The poverty stricken student line of engagement rings”.
And the single small diamond that I grew to love
to know the way it shed light through its carbon heart
that I lost playing in the park one day with our little sons.
You were happy we still had the setting while
I mourned my sparkling companion.
A new stone has lived resplendent in the ring for long enough
that I treasure its own foibles, although it was a stranger at first.
But the cheap gold setting last year faltered, twisted, opened
now lives out its own lockdown in the box
waiting for the Jewellers to re-open.
Copyright © 2021 Kim Whysall-Hammond
My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Object Poems
The idea is to take an object and focus on the abstract and also give our poems the title ‘THIS IS NOT A…’
We should choose an object from inside the home or outdoors, look past its obvious characteristics and uses, and spare the details. Instead, we should write about the connection it has to us or what it represents: what it means, the memories it holds; the emotions it evokes, etc.
The Cheesesellers Wife 