Silhouettes

Black silhouettes sit in the silver bullet carving the evening,
their clandestine mission to decode Babel over for the day.

Commuters glide into the country past trees and water towers,
mere silhouettes as well against a purple canvas

which is the dying of another day of saints and sins.
Ten miles away, the city is a bar graph silhouette,

silent since tongues have wagged enough about the latest turn of events.
The grade upon which the silver rails are laid is far above my own,

nor can I read flat midnight shadows on my bedroom wall.
A thousand miles away, the silhouette of Earth spins the elliptical,

a commuter returning home after four billion years of days,
and where it came from or where it is going is unknown.

Its home lies far beyond the switching yard at the end of the line,
where three dimensions draw the soul and no longer hide or align. 

~William Hammett

Site Map

Home

About William Hammett

Poem Index

Poetry Sites of Interest

Copyright and Publication Information
Contact

The Wink

It’s hard to believe how fast her sun rose and set,
the sultry wink and affirmative nod,

a flower that blooms once in a generation and dies.
Her portrait hangs on a tree in a yard that is forever autumn,

death in passion that flames so quickly and fades
because we are blind and know not what we do.

The hour of my visitation was no longer
than the space between the coming and going of a breath.

Comet West, a harbinger, winked with its cold fire
and tried to trace my path in the stars,

but I wasn’t a wise man in that year of our Lord.
Always surrender your heart for good

when the universe winks and the flirtation grows long
lest a desert of scrub cactus unroll at your feet,

the only garden that is tilled being the one
that blossoms in the memory from time to bygone time.

 

~William Hammett

Site Map

Home

About William Hammett

Poem Index

Poetry Sites of Interest

Copyright and Publication Information

Contact

Tomorrow I Will Be in Paris

Tomorrow I will sit outside a café in Paris
and drink coffee and read the paper
and watch stick figures in their haute couture.

That is what I am expected to do.
I will wander through the mostly empty rooms
of a museum and stare at brazen brushstrokes

dead for a hundred years or more
while pretending that I have great insight into color and form.
That is what I am expected to do.

I will sleep with a mysterious stranger named Collette,
the sun pouring through the open window
to wash our bodies clean of the encounter

before we rise and take to the street
to move the clock forward an hour or two,
for that is what we are expected to do.

After a glass of wine and a baguette,
I shall take a long nap in the sagging bed
in the top room of the house of yellow stucco

while bicycles in the street below ring their bells.
That is what I am expected to do.
In the evening I will rise from my body

and float down streets into the bouquet of lights
that is Paris when romance and leisure summon the night,
for that is what I am expected to do.

When I awaken in the morning from this cockeyed dream,
I will call you Collette and buy two tickets to France,
for I am certain that this is what you expect me to do.

~William Hammett

Site Map

Home

About William Hammett

Poem Index

Poetry Sites of Interest

Copyright and Publication Information
Contact