The Poetry of William Hammett

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Just a Coincidence

Was it just a coincidence
that the cardinal sat on a branch
outside my morning window
to bring me news of the day?

Was it just a coincidence

that the full moon rose

and sat on the same branch

to brighten the night with its shine?

And is it just a coincidence

that there is a tree there at all

with branches to hold

the bird and the moon

and a thousand leaves

upon which are written

the everyday scriptures

of sun and wind and rain?

And is it just a coincidence

that the id of the universe,

so infinitely small

and so wonderfully wide,

allows you to sit here now

and read this simple poem?

Is it just a coincidence

that there is anything at all?

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025

The Year of the Black Limousine

It was the year when a black limousine
and a country lost its mind in Dallas,
the year when the Beatles started the decade late
and made it their very own
by driving in long black cars
coated with fab and undulating scream.

It was the year when the first helicopter

hit the Asian ground in man-eating jungles

that wrote a thousand history books

with and without the silence and the sound.

It was when I started picking strings and wood,

when the Village stole my heart

and showed my brain and fingers the could

before the long-awaited would and should.

It was the year I made a fledgling start

and read poems by Alfred Lord,

who whispered I wouldn’t always be alone,

though as for the promise of a peace accord,

I later loved and lost

someone I found by accident

and hung my heart on skin and bone.

Sixty-three was like nothing ever seen,

and like all the years that die yet live,

it became a grave with tilted marking stone.

It was the year of the black limousine.

~William Hammett

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Friday, April 4, 2025

With a Hey Nonny Nonny No

I do not know why laughter rings
so many bells and shakes snow and sun
from the life of green or lingering leaves.

I only know that late last week

happiness slipped around my spine

and pushed joy into my brain.

Kundalini light and ringing rain

and zephyrs refusing to toe the line

made wind chimes go happily insane.

Now freed from the belly of the whale,

I am left to tell the tale

with a hey nonny nonny no.

~William Hammett

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Monday, March 31, 2025

Singapore Sweeper

I saw the black woman,
missing one eye and a finger,
sweeping the airport in Singapore,
humming and smiling
as if she were a queen
or a monk minus the orange.
Instead of raking a gravel garden,
she moved dust this way and that,
swirling patterns of the cosmos
for all I know, spiral galaxies
or mandalas intended for the trash bin’s hat.
She saw me and bowed,
and I returned the vow
to the sisterhood that keeps time
and orders the accoutrements of place
so that every space may have a rhyme.
The wooden broom
was her shepherd’s crook,
her bandana a holy veil.
She was invisible to most,
but I suspect that she was revelation.
I know that she was God.

~William Hammett

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Monday, March 24, 2025

Merlin

I spied him in Wales
atop a broken castle, his cape
whipping in wizard wind
above pale parapet stones
ground into uneven history.
Other times I saw him
reflected in rainy day puddles,
a beard of brazen branches,
or white clouds dusting the moon.
Later, I saw him at a strip mall
in New Jersey, opening a magic shop,
his black robes embossed
with signs of the zodiac and caught
on the door of his rusted pickup truck.
He waved a satin scarf
and shook out dime store magic
for buck-tooth kids with lazy eyes
that hoped against hope it was real.
“Hard time for wizards?” I asked.
“I’m still on the clock,” he said.
“The wheel of time’s a bitch,
and the world has grown so blind.”
I walked away and turned. “Wales?”
He winked and pulled a crumb from his beard.
“A trick of the mind, son.
Like everything, a trick of the mind.”

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

The New Language of Love

There is the great dying of the day,
the falling of the bloated orange sun
into a sea that is too blue to be real,
the wafer dipped into the chalice, as it were.
Purple and violet fire breaks out along the horizon.
The day is quenched, and the steam
that rises from the line where water meets sky
becomes the blackest void, the empty mind of God
until a thousand million stars appear,
the brilliant but silent seraphim,
and it is all made possible because you and I,
holding hands and nothing more,
are standing barefoot on the sandy shore,
a light sea breeze tossing our hair
and teaching us the new language of love.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Dark Lady

A kiss
and a bottle of wine
are paired for love
that is wetter.

A kiss when your lips

are already dripping

with juice from the vineyard

is even better.

Here.

Take.

You have been kissed

with a vintage growing

under the lusty Italian sun

where the grapes

only get redder.

Here.

Take.

With my pen

dipped in sweet purple ink,

I send you this letter.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025

You and I

You are the breath and the breeze.
I am the tree you speak to.

You are silver streams of rain.

I am dark soil, waiting,

the seed that opens to hear the new tale told.

You are mystical energy.

I am the dreamcatcher who interprets

your vision, your words, your sight.

You are sunlight streaming through space.

I am a world waiting to live and catch fire.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Herons Visit Mary Oliver

Herons, ducks, and geese
rise in morning splendor
from a gold and violet dawn,
the sun giving them due notice
to migrate to the next best place
they are unaware of.

They will follow

the poetry of sky,

already sensing the pen

or pencil on the pad.

Wingtips dip unpolished silver water,

ascend to the great flapping and waving

of flight known only to an author

not in visible sight.

But oh, in time, in time.

In time

they land on her shoulders, knees,

on her hands and arms

and in her poems,

where they become

ink, cursive and swooping,

dipping on the off-white page

to describe the feathered meaning

of fowl.

They speak of sedge and reeds

and mud and the ether

that binds it all together as one.

The still words are moving,

the meaning set and yet undone

with the flapping of a page.

I wish I could live,

write, and see as one of these,

the little ones who form

a kingdom in search of a scribe

with words that may

or may not rhyme

depending on what she sees

at any particular time.

~William Hammett

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Monday, February 17, 2025

Bodhisattva

I am the gentleman in the black tuxedo,
on his arm the model with alabaster skin.
I am the Rock of Gibraltar risen from the sea
to escort the twisting form of femininity.
I am the woman in the white evening gown
wearing diamonds enough to rival midnight stars.
I am the matrix of Eve and carnal desire.
I am the Logos, the Second Coming,
and if you tell me that I am mad,
off the rails, or something worse,
I will say, “Why didn’t you notice earlier?”
The stable at Bethlehem is just down the street
from my house and from yours.
We are all shapeshifting swiveling hips,
the man with the handsome chiseled jaw,
all preachers from Galilee, apprentices
holding a hammer, a plane, and a saw.
We are all incarnations of the divine.
You may not have remembered until now,
but you once sat under the bodhi tree.
Once, you awakened from a dream.
There was a time when you rose to the occasion
and turned water into wine.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Not Very Long Ago

I don’t know who God is,
but you will do, my dearest,
for when our breath was joined
in a kiss long or short,
there was spirit, the knowing
beyond all knowing,
the fire that illuminates desire,
the stream that cools the lips,
the bird speaking in tongues
while perched on the evening wire.
Your short dark hair was soft,
as was your voice, your life,
your gentle way of holding me
with your bedroom eyes.
A cloud sailed over my head
not very long ago
when the day was almost lost,
but I remembered you,
not for the first time,
and the moment was saved.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, February 4, 2025

The Blessing of Pablo Neruda

For the sake of argument,
let us agree that the chance encounter
was at a quaint café on a narrow street
where I sipped coffee and you drank wine.

Despite this side-by-side jitterbug and waltz,

we decided that Proust was entirely too heavy

to carry around in a rucksack or the brain.

For the sake of argument, we strolled the park

with a bottle of wine and a baguette,

staring at the lake and catching imaginary fish,

though you pulled in a black rubber boot,

claiming that you must paint it in your loft.

Found art is the best, you said.

There, with the blessing of Neruda,

I admired your free-flowing fountain,

the landscape of your valleys and mountains,

your flat stomach and rolling breasts,

the slope of your thighs and shoulders.

But let us dismiss this rhetorical argument,

for I see a story in your eyes.

Let us begin with chapter one, page one,

a story so long that it will be carried for decades

without burden or the lost time of Swann.

You are my found art, a prose poem

that ends with our sleeping in each other’s arms,

our hair gray, our dreams of coffee

and wine and baguettes in the park.

Now to begin: Once upon a time.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, January 28, 2025

And Then There Was Leonard Cohen

He was a man in a maze
who loved to fight and argue with God,
who wasn’t afraid to take issue
with prohibitions and guilt
and throw it all back in his face,
as it were.
Good for him.

And there was his love of Marianne

and Tangled Up in Blue,

the one that got way,

but not really, not for good.
You have to admire

the kiss savored for decades

and sex as a sacrament

that keeps the universe

from spinning apart.
Good for him.

At the end,

he signed his treaty

with the Great Whatever

and asked to be dealt out of the game.

He had ponied up the lyrics

that were as fluid and sacred as wine.

Good for him.

At the end,

he felt the dark night pulling him,

and his songs, his priests,

his hallelujah hosts

had blessed a world with sin,

and whether he knew it or not

had said it’s alright to be who you are.

All I have to say about any of it

is good for him.

~William Hammett

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