Poetry | Kim Whysall-Hammond

Compostable Love

Happy hours are spent caring
for my compost heaps, feeding them
weeds, grass cuttings, kitchen scraps

The joy of opening a lid
limned with curvaceous curling worms
writhing in clammy pink clumps

a welcome puff of warm air
demostrating that abundant life is
busy about its bacterial business

watching millipedes and centipedes scatter
diving deep into their insectivorous city
that teems with life and death

I look forward to spreading the fine rich proceeds
of all this work by others on my soil
decay as an engine for renewal

---

Meditation

First fill a seed tray
with the gathered contents of a mole hill
(much recommended by old gaffers)
otherwise compost
the best is home made
then moisten slightly
tamp and level your chosen sewing medium
reach for the seed packet
noting its instructions
contemplate if you will follow them
or will sow at a depth and frequency of
your own choosing

Now enact
a promise to the near future
place seeds, whether they are
fine as dust, little globs
or discoloured wrinkled beans,
in the tray

Water
Label
Repeat

---

Kim Whysall-Hammond has worked in Climate research and then Telecommunications. Her poetry has been published by Palewell Press, Wild Pressed Books, Two Rivers Press, Alchemy Spoon, Marble Poetry, Ink, Sweat and Tears, London Grip and Crannóg.

Website:  thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/

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