It is always dawn and dusk
Time moves on geographically
The terminator line marches inexorably
Round and round the planet
Smoothed across the sparkling Pacific
Cut to shreds by jagged mountains
Rippled across desert dunes
Unnoticed in the mega-cities
Each second brings a thousand tiny awakenings
A thousand tiny refugees from sleep
A thousand predatory opportunities
A thousand closings
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Previously published on In Between Hangovers
Deep in the time of eclipse
As birds bed down and dusk creeps up
We see the Suns halo and crown
Reaching out to her children
Light in the darkness
Sunlight scatters from escaping electrons
Bounces off minute dust particles
While stripped atoms glow as crown jewels
Incandescently hot
Ethereal furnace
The act of seeing makes real
The fact of knowing sees beauty
The inner joyousness of the Universe
Lifts me
Up to the light
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Driving in a roast red desert
Headlights staring into primeval dark
The untrammeled sky glorious
Above us a bridge of stars
Rivering between rocky horizons
At once near and so very far
Cricking my neck to see
I bounced around the back of the open jeep
Absorbing, amid the shudders, splendor
Star birth and death, worlds hidden by distance
Great glowing nebulae
Fat in the centre, a devouring black hole
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Dunes
Rolling along the shore
Linear formation
Field of Dunes
Rounded and steep sloped
Not barren sand
But sheltering life
A sandy ecosystem
That
In turn
Holds down the drifting sand
Rolling along the shore
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Folk tales of little people abound
Retreating to the deep Earth
Now and then to emerge and engage
Ensnare or enslave
With trickery or with passion
Peripatetic you may have been
Leaving small trace of your lives
But deep in an African cave
We have found you
Naledi, little stars
We term the women who reclaimed you to the light
Underground astronauts
Yet you carried your beloved dead here
Through narrow clefts, over parlous depths
To lay them tenderly down to rest
As we stare into our deep past
And find you, Homo naledi
Those of us who wonder
Those of us who marvel
Are ensnared and enamoured
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The discovery of fossils of a new human species (Homo Naledi) is, in itself, a fascinating story. But why they are so ‘cool’ is very well explained by our fellow blogger on Fossil History at https://fossilhistory.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/homo-naledi-why-these-fossils-are-so-friggen-cool/
National Geographic describes them as “A fully modern hand sported wackily curved fingers, fit for a creature climbing trees. The shoulders were apish too, and the widely flaring blades of the pelvis were as primitive as Lucy’s—but the bottom of the same pelvis looked like a modern human’s. The leg bones started out shaped like an australopithecine’s but gathered modernity as they descended toward the ground. The feet were virtually indistinguishable from our own.”
The “underground astronauts” (left to right): Becca Peixotto, Alia Gurtov, Elen Feuerriegel, Marina Elliott, K. Lindsay (Eaves) Hunter and Hannah Morris.
