There are never enough photos of Pico

There are never enough photos of Pico
Says he, as he takes yet one more
The light has changed again
And the mountain looks about to roar
We’ve flown over and around her
Driven along her lower slopes
But the best view is away from her
From little Horta’s shore

The mountain slumbers on
Fuji slopes gracefully curving down
She glows rose in the dawns light
By midday she can glower and frown
Clouds drape her and embrace her
Shadowing scree and walled-in grapevine
However far we travel away from her
Somehow that volcano is always mine

Copyright © 2015 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Re-blogged from 2015, about my favourite mountain, Mount Pico in the Azores.

Photographs by Ivor Gurney

Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily;

   Watching the candle guttering in the draught;

Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily

   Singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed

With pity and pride, photographs of all colours,

   All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France;

Or mother’s faces worn with countless dolours;

   Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance,

Though in a picture only, a common cheap

   Ill-taken card; and children—frozen, some

(Babies) waiting on Dicky-bird to peep

   Out of the handkerchief that is his home

(But he’s so shy!). And some with bright looks, calling

   Delight across the miles of land and sea,

That not the dread of barrage suddenly falling

   Could quite blot out—not mud nor lethargy.

Smiles and triumphant careless laughter. O

   The pain of them, wide Earth’s most sacred things!

Lying in dug-outs, hearing the great shells slow

   Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings.

But once—O why did he keep that bitter token

   Of a dead Love?—that boy, who, suddenly moved,

Showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken,

   A girl who better had not been beloved.

by Ivor Gurney

       one of my favourite poets.

Herepath

Herepath

Wide as ten men abreast
The old military road
Cuts between farms
Dips down to the river
Rises up over the moor
Rabbits lollop along it
Lambs bleat in fields beside it
Rosebay glows at sunset
Where were the wars that you marched to?
What were the victories that you won?
Here on the old Herepath
The road truly goes ever on

Copyright © 2017  Kim Whysall-Hammond

Crying the moor

Crying the moor

Sedge and moss, peat and grass
Cover  the uplands
Sheep run from us, cattle simply watch
Clouds scud past, rain threatens
Stone track turns to muddy path
As we descend to the combe
Past the ruins, past the ponies
Towards the burble of falling water
The fluidity that carved the hill folds
The agent that governs this landscape
Made manifest in Hollocombe Water

Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond

Heart and soul

Heart and soul

Something seems to have punched holes in the sky
Ringed with burning hydrogen, glowing against the dark
So we can peer through to  blues, brighter stars
A sparkling alternate perhaps
Where life is sweet, death is no robber
All is bathed in glorious light
But look again, these apparent peep-holes
Are no miniatures, they are huge
Light takes hundreds of years to cross them
And millennia to arrive here with this picture
Celestial chrysanthemums colouring the sky
Tempting me to fantasy

Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161116.html

Photos

Photos

Sorting through a box of family photos………..

Moments set in the aspic of a photo
Smiles captured in chemical emulsions
Or the many pixels of light sensitive electronics
Laughter lost in time and space
Monochrome images or faded colours
Glossy rectangles with a sharp chemical scent
Hasty inkjet prints on inadequate paper
Rumpled by the moisture of the ink
Boxes full of mixed random images
From a life now lived and gone
Sometimes scribbled names on the back
Unknown unknowable faces
Odd ones where scissors have edited someone out
There is no order to this
To the memories evoked
The surprise findings
The glimpses into the undiscovered country

Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond