Stars poured over sky
like water over stones
arcing through banks of vast dark.
An owl calls softly
so as to not break
the spell of night.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
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Tag Archives: sky
Poems published on Longshot Island
I am delighted to tell you that a collection of my poems have just been published on Longshot Island:
http://www.longshotisland.com/2018/01/26/living-poems/
Regular readers of this blog will recognise three poems, which have appeared here in a slightly different form. ‘Dance’ will be new to you however.
Solar Flares
I do like poems with an Astronomical bent, and here’s a wonderful one from Paul F. Lenzi:
“Solar Flare” by Dan Oliver
particle storms
shriek at inhuman
inaudible frequency
penetrate matter
lase holes through
the bones of minds
living and dead
mark acutely
the genomes of
all cosmic creatures
yet to be born
with the warning
that even the sun
is disposed to
explosions of rage
From my books Pieces of Wine and Legacies (vol.2)
EOS
I would like to share this wonderful poem by Louis Faber with you:
Tomorrow the morning
will arrive as it always does,
eating the last vestiges
of night, painting the sky
in puce and crimson.
It will foretell the rain
that will carry our dreams
down the hill
and into storm sewers,
eventually to wash into the lake.
But in that moment
when the sky is ablaze,
none of that matters,
save the beauty of dawn.
The Overwhelming Sky
The overwhelming sky enthralls me
Shows me its magic, fills me with glory
Layers of stratus, piles of towering cumulus
Cirrus lacing glazes overtop
Neon pink icy scribbling on an evening horizon
Fireworks sunsets, pale sleepy dawns
Reds, yellows, purples, greens overwrite the blue and black
Gauguin, Picasso, Rothko must have felt this
The Starry Night is truth, no wonder Vincent suffered so
Genghis rode under this dome that encompasses all of our lives
Did its pressure drive him to the cities for refuge rather than plunder?
The overwhelming sky appears to have no end
Although I know that it is but the skin on the planet apple
It bears down on me, it conquers me
Filling me up with its immensity
Until I spill this burden of words
To offer them as sacrificial token
To try to explain this hold
To bid to exorcise it
To seek release
But
It is the master of me
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
First published on Your One Phone Call earlier this year . Part of a series of poems about the sky, others are Open Sky and Evening Star.
The many names of Rain
Precipitation within sight
Rain, drizzle, mizzle
Soft weather, mucky weather
‘The Smoky Smirr o Rain’
Liquid sunshine
Slow words, gentle
But it was spitting this morning
Pitter patter, splash, splish, splodge, squelch
And it bucketed down last night
A torrent, raining cats and dogs
Not a light soaking rain
Squalling, hailing and sleeting
Flooding, flowing, swamping
A deluge chucking it down
Drowning
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Faint stars
Faint stars pooled like milk at zenith
Coloured lights tracking across
Blinking
Deep night swallows all light
Here on the Moor
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Drifts
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! 🙂
Dunkery
Lording over the moors and valleys, visible out to sea
Bold Dunkery, crowned with cairns ancient and modern
Your summit cairn is in summer twilight crowned by larking lads
Come to watch the sunset, yet cheated by horizon hugging cloud
They revel in unexpected solitude at a well trodden spot
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
It was lovely up at Dunkery Beacon in the twilight.
Dawn creeps across the land
Dawn creeps across the land
Shining her pale light into nests
Causing baby birds to call for food
Dormice to rub their eyes and blink
Ants to speed up their hurrying and scurrying
She reaches up to wash the sky with pale blue
And a hint of rose at the east
And , as a special treat today, the west
Smiling to herself as the world awakes
She feels a certain self satisfaction as the Sun
With a near audible plop
Detaches itself from the horizon
Then like any other woman
Readies herself for a busy day
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
First published on In Between Hangovers: https://inbetweenhangovers.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/dawn-creeps-across-the-land-by-kim-whysall-hammond/
