As we move through space
We move through time
One controlled
The other inexorable
As the future approaches
We can but hold our head high
Wait for the chances
Have the courage to leap
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The last poem from the challenge I’ve been following for a short while. This poem is in response to the prompt ‘future’.
We spin along
The great groove of change
Pushing forward through time
Stretching to our demise
We weave our lives
From friendships, loves won and lost
The weft of sorrow, the haft of joy
Riding on our spinning mass of rock
Its all spinning in the end
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Nebulaic drift of space glows pregnant with stars
Pulsates with unseen radiation, reflects light upon broken hulls
Billowing gases thread through holes laced by stellar blasts
Huge gas pillars glow with the light from star birth
Strange shapes eclipse the details of nebulaic magnificence
Ships riddled by particle winds after a disaster deep in spacetime
Now drift in loose orbits within a mystery, artefacts lost to sentience and story
Deep in the cloud lies a graveyard drifting to gravity’s pale tune
Gas jets burst from infant stars, glow in unseen colours
Shoot forth ionized subatomic debris
Push against torn metal, shifting orbits, prompting collisions
Against desiccated limbs, simulating life once more
The beings who struggled and died here disassociate and powder to dust
Microbes drift and seed, await rebirth in planetary clouds
Amino acids alter with the alien input
Nucleotides drift forward to the future
Ghost DNA haunts the spaces between worlds
Drifts onto comet sand meteors
Drops into planetary atmospheres
Visits us tonight as it has done before
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
First published at In Between Hangovers
Some Science Fiction to celebrate that fact that I’m attending the Science Fiction Worldcon this weekend! 🙂
Each siesta, my gecko came
Skittering across the mottled ceiling
Dancing over paint flakes
Lengthening his neck to peer down
At me
He would not leave his hiding hole
Until I laid me down to rest
In the Sicilian noonday heat
Then two sparkling gleaming eyes
Held vigil
Halfway between stick and snake
Sandy spiky little friend
Padded feet gripping to defy gravity
My curious Gecko watched over me
Literally
Once his powers failed him
And he plopped down onto my chest
I woke to see him face to face
And find in those eyes
Understanding
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Let me lie here
Open to the sky
Counting blessings
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The unease of an empty house
The loneliness of children gone
The sadness of a lover away
The concentration of a painting class
The contemplation of piece of art
Busy baking, waiting for family to return
Tramping on a long country walk
Song birds in the garden
Hens around my feet
Quiet to read the difficult book
Peace to find the space where I am me
Copyright © 2015 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Re-blogged from 2015….
Today we visited the plant place
Delighted in sturdy trees and shrubs
And many small flowers nurtured to full brightness
In a long slow chill spring
By a couple who could be us in fifteen years time
We took time to linger, to chat and choose
Brought home Lavender, rooted stems of Blackthorn
Several small domes of Thyme
“We bought some Thyme” I said to our teen-aged son
Who contested that time cannot be bought
But is spent often heedlessly
Slipping away unnoticed
We bought time in his younger days with reduced incomes
Time spent with him and his brother
Not wasted, but well-used and treasured
I delight in this sturdy young man
Tended and taught, growing to the light
Both plants and children need tender care
Nurseries are a well spring of civilisation
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The”Plant place” is Wolverton Plants. I wrote this a couple of months ago after a visit on my birthday, and have just found it again on a stray piece of paper. I publish it today in honour of ‘Where are the Chickens’ new baby son….
https://wherearethechickens.com/2017/06/08/blackberries-and-a-baby/
And we stand upon this globe
Asking of the Universe
What?
Recognition?
Salvation?
Whatever you please
In it’s glory
(Shown by our ingenuity and craft
As we build orbital telescopes)
The Universe does not need us
Unless as an observer
Are we here simply to watch?
Look up, look up
Glory awaits
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Poetry makes nothing happen
Poetry may make nothing happen, but poetry happens to me
Announces its first line as others worm into my brain
Poetry flows stuttering from head to fingers to paper or screen
Words arrive and force themselves out
Typed frantically into the phone at the roadside, scribbled on random sheets
Telling stories, painting pictures, crying love or grief
It is mine in so much as I capture and tidy it
In so much as the stories, pictures, loves and grief’s are mine
Sometimes I can pull the inspiration to me
Make it give me the means for what I need or want to express
Make it work for me (like now)
But mostly it is a response
Poetry happens
To me
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The picture quotes Leonard Cohen
Inspired by:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
WH Auden
I refute your logic
I refute your logic
We will pass through it
As if it doesn’t exist
Lying here grasping each other
Waiting and holding
Until further disturbed
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
