The Poetry of William Hammett

Friday, April 3, 2026

Lying with a Woman in a Boat under the Moon

The world is at a standstill.
The seasons neither retreat nor advance
on this July evening at the lake
by the summer house that is ours
for the week, even the mosquitos
too lazy to get a good buzz on.
The sky rolls into dark blue, then black.
The boat drifts to the middle of microcosm,
my love cradled in the crook of my arm
as we lie prostrate and behold first the stars
and then the silver coin of moon
as it rises and paints the quiet water
with its version of mid-summer.
A small wind rises, rocks the boat by inches,
and she is on top of me, eyes closed,
naked as she moves in rhythm
to the waves, the breeze.
The moon has disappeared,
revealing the constellations, the stars.
And then we are face to face,
side by side before turning
to see that we are once again
beneath sensual Luna, who blesses
our silent joining and the kisses
that will remain when the lake is frozen
in the dark skies of December.

~William Hammett

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Friday, March 27, 2026

The Monday Morning Marathon Swimmer

She is twenty-two going on a million,
diving into the Olympic pool at four a.m.
She is alone, evening and morning, the first day.
Goggle eyes pop from her head, then widen,
more frog than human, or so it seems.
She does the crawl, the breast, feet flippers
pushing her through the chlorine ocean
that becomes saltier with each lap.
Monday is moving on as the knife fish
turns its head left and right, gulping for air,
before it disappears into the green water,
lungs replaced by gills, skin with scales.
Why is it Tuesday? Where does the time go?
It lumbers onto the beach with arm fins,
drags itself across rock and earth into ferns,
lightning now carving the sky into zippers
above volcanoes seeding the primordial seas.
By Wednesday she will cross savannahs and climb trees,
and on Thursday walk upright with no prehensile tail.
Come Friday, she will trade stocks and ride the subway
before beholding ants from the glass skyscraper.

~William Hammett

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Friday, March 20, 2026

Axles and Bones

The veteran sits in the glass waiting room,
his car undergoing surgery with solenoid sutures,
tires aligned and torqued and measured,
blood drained and replaced to lubricate
the valves of a piston heart and carburetor lungs.
“Gonna tighten up this gal,” the service guy says.
The old man watches the interstate twenty yards away,
cars sliding through arteries and headed for Texas,
but the sinus rhythm, like his own, is gone.
Traffic is erratic, not something to hang your hat on.
He scrolls through his phone, deletes contacts
that were dead and dying fifteen years ago.
Staring at the sky, eyes glazed,
he slips a little lower in the leather chair,
draws his shoulders closer to his ribs,
and the plaid shirt is suddenly two sizes too big.
His bones are compacting, shock absorbers
taking blows from sixty years ago.
He remembers the German he killed
with a bayonet on a beach in France,
and his memories are crowding in,
falling into a black hole because the cars
are moving too fast now, too fast,
and he doesn’t want to keep track anymore.
His vehicle is lowered on the rack, is compacted
by gravity and grease and hydraulic entropy.
The day is moving on, getting shorter,
and when the service guy comes looking
for the VFW hat here, there, and everywhere,
he finds a pile of clothes on the leather chair.

~William Hammett

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Friday, March 13, 2026

Lady Godiva Blue Eyes

Golden hair wrapping and overlapping
full breasts on the white steed, polishing
her stomach and thighs, the lady doth protest,
but not too much, the taxes of Coventry
as she, smiling and nude and tripping on sun,
sweeps the town bare of a husband’s small gun.
But why stop there, she thinks, as she squirms
with delight of the loping left and the lilting right.
Leofric’s an ass, and not one she can ride,
so she cantors into Max’s upstate meadow
goin’ up the country where water tastes like wine,
where canned heat is a long time coming
and fig leaves are unnecessary while people smoke the vine.
This is a town where the men can be appeased.
No one turns a head, and yet everyone is pleased.
Handsome Johnny is stamping on the stage,
and Country Joe follows the sweet blue eyes of Judy.
In tall grass the lady lays with lanky, ropey, hips,
ballin’ the jack and jackin’ the ball.
She’s tripping on orange sunshine again,
and there’s no tax because the promoters are taking a bath.
What’s that spell? What’s that spell?
She has lost the head count after three days of lovers
and the Fender bass beating back helicopter blades.
After a year and some days making candles and things,
she becomes some guy’s old lady with butterfly wings.
If you see her, say hello, but beware of the sassafras tea.
It can take from here to there, which is fine if you’re looking
for a one-way ticket to Wordsworth’s pleasant lea.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Saint Basil's Harmonica

Sitting on the bench in Central Park,
Basil blows blue notes into dusk,
serenades, wails, wanders over the stops
with a tongue that goddamns the damned.
Pigeons, robins, sparrows—all become
blackbirds in the jangle of metal jungle—
scatter like gunships shaving a tree line
at the sound of Saint Basil’s harmonica,
skimming rice paddies with evening-violet napalm.
His hands cup the organ with tremolo trim
polluting the air with staccato music,
bullets from a bandolier feeding the M60 Pig
to mow down joggers and the Cong.
Before long, the day dies.
Behind aviator lenses and olive drab shirt,
the shuffles to the Catholic church,
lights a candle to Our Lady of the Buddha,
whose temples ruled the heart of darkness
in Asia land, in Asia land.
He curls up on the last pew and sleeps,
and in his dream there is weeping
before crickets calm the convolutions of his brain.
A candle sputters, goes dark.
Hollow bamboo shoots, reeds to blow
a dirge or Mekong Delta blues,
grow in the night by the stained-glass window
on which Christ feeds a lamb not long for this world.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Playing Chess with Confucius

I do not understand his moves.
They are random, his queen
traipsing across the board
like a streetwalker looking for tricks
with a lusty bishop or a knight
behaving like a Calaveras jumping frog.
He throws the I Ching before every move,
looking at the random yarrow sticks
before pushing a pawn into slave labor.
He smiles a lot and says he can’t lose.
“It is what it is,” he says with a sigh.
“Be good, be kind. Drink rice wine
and make love in moderation.
Study art, politics, and religion.”
I move a rook two squares to the left.
“You’re a stereotype,” I say. “Checkmate.”
He scratches a whiskered chin.
“Ah,” he says. “Just as it should be.
The Mandate of Heaven prevails."
He is full of wind and words,
a puffy cloud with too many followers.
He puts a stick in each of his nostrils
and twitches his erudite nose.
“I am a walrus,” he laughs.
“Ah, just as it should be,” I say.
“The laughing toad gathers no moss.
A stitch in time saves nine. Etcetera.”
He snores while I sneak away
with his college coed courtesan.

~William Hammett

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Monday, February 16, 2026

Praying to the Gods and Saints for Good Weather and Gold

Fishermen cast wide nets for mackerel
and trout, the wide-eyed captives
flipping and smacking in the mesh,
silver and gold coins reflecting
sun scales, rainbow tarnished
and plucked from the novenas and votives
at the four a.m. fisherman’s mass.
Mumbled words disappear in the flames.
Multiplied wafers no longer offer the balm.
Let there be fair weather and calm,
no thunderheads or Satan spawn
to tilt the sea or rock the sailor’s brain.
Let market and monger be paid in full,
the gods appeased, the papal bull
from Peter’s boat absolving the sky of rain.
Let drachmas in the fish’s mouth
pay the temple tax and bribe old Triton
to blow his conch and the anchor weigh.
Are we even now? Am I free to go?
It is time to cast off with spinnaker spin.
The mariners are shrived, the widows grieved
because husbands are lost in the Galilee.
Let us be done with canonized feet
that walk upon the rumpled sheet.
It’s over, gone, and done, this hope
for cloud and coin and copper tin.
The wide-eyed fish and flock are the ones
who are always nailed with the Savior’s sin.

~William Hammett

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Thursday, February 5, 2026

The Titty Bar

The stripes and spots and speckles
of lions, leopards, and tigers
rise and spin and fold under the disco ball,
turn upside down, legs splayed,
delayed by fingers stroking chrome
as the roving lights lick the carousel
with beams on seams of skin-tight silk,
of tawdry fur and feather boas
constricting the neck and nexus
of the gyre, the gyration well-lubricated
with gin and rose oil rhymed, timed
to make the fluid hemispheres revolve
around the son of man who has come
to call this flock to savannah’s trial
in a kingdom where the many mansions
are in the back, red velvet and black lights
ushering in a rapture of Midwest conventioneers
walking the midway between the breast of dawn,
between the gasp and lickety leers
and twilight’s last suckle of a naked gleam.
The ups and downs exist but in a dream.
All are actors, and all who enter here are sprites
who may have given you to slumber for a while.
Stuff the greenbacks into the collection plates,
the order of the garter and the snakes,
and you shall find yourselves at home again,
the wife and kids, asleep, bringing the ship to rights.

~William Hammett

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Friday, January 30, 2026

Fish and Birds and Other Things

The black and white prince
behind the kitschy shrine,
incense and thurible in hand,
falls down the sanctuary steps
and slumps in the red confessional
to hear and absolve his hidden sins.
Lighting candles on the very top shelf,
the physician never seems to heal himself.

It is all well and good

if he's drunk as hell on altar wine,

for no one offends the universe.

Everyone has thrown the first stone.

Everyone has delivered the gut punch

and colored outside of the lines.

Everyone has picked up the serrated blade

and cut the here and now

far too close to the bone.

Let there be saints,

but not ones with robes

or halos or praying hands.

Let them be fish and birds

and other wondrous things

that pirouette like the sun and moon

and grace the air like insect wings.

Let the sacred and the profane

lie in the marriage bed.

Let them become great with child

who revels and dances and always sings

to the wizards and witches who live in the wild.

Let the world stumble its way into holiness

without canon law firing its rumble and roar.

Let there be fish and birds and other things.

~William Hammett

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Friday, January 23, 2026

Hanging from the Belt of Orion

Orion marches through December,
the bear always in front of him
despite a thousand years of pursuit.
It is the way he navigates the years.
I live alone in a cabin in the woods
with a fire, a bed, a stack of books,
and a long oak table and chairs.
It is the way I navigate life.
With a shotgun, I chased away naked St. Francis
because I dislike holy men lacking self-esteem.
The red cardinal speaks to me of philosophy.
He has no theology to speak of
and says God is the tree, the wind, the stream,
only that and no more,
though we have made him in our image
and pursued him for a thousand years.
I am an apprentice of Orion,
hanging from his jeweled belt
while tramping through the snow
in the long, cold, dark night
searching for a scripture only I can write.
It is the way I navigate the stars.

~William Hammett

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Friday, January 16, 2026

The Wind

The wind is everything and nothing.
It blows brown bags down the street
to keep the idea of carrying things
beyond the grasp of an already frazzled woman,
whips the hats off beggars who can ill afford
an affront from the Invisible man, of all people.
It knocks down perfectly good trees,
the schoolyard bully who taunts because he can.
It slams rain into windows like buckshot,
sends floodwater gushing into small towns
filled with Raggedy Ann and Andy people
now too limp to file the insurance forms.

But then, but then . . .

it tousles the hair of a scorned woman

who decides that her lover is an ass after all.

It drives clouds that look like sailing ships

over the schoolyard to fire imaginations

of little men and women who seek the sea

and dreams too tall for their present reach.

It spins the mind of a poet into a sonnet

about zephyrs and sprites and inspiration

blowing off Olympus with power too great

to be tamed by the hands of mortal men

who wish the air to cool fevered brows

and evaporate sweat worked up in the field.

It is a mystery.

It is nowhere to be seen and everywhere to be felt.

It is mistress, god, and sledgehammer

that can slam bones into powder and dust

or caress cheeks and make love to naked skin

bathing in a stream or daring to stand

in a garden like Adam minus sin.

I blink, turn my head, open my mouth,

and my head is full of rushing ether,

all my doors and windows open.

I do not know what soul this might be

or what it does except claim the right

to circle and swirl and hold the world

in its grasp or decide that it should go free.

~William Hammett

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Thursday, January 8, 2026

Half-Lives

The half moon still governs the tides,
still washes the sand and evens the score.

A wink with one eye of two still lures the stranger

on the suburban train, a Venus on the half-shell.

Half a heart still attracts the soulmate

assuming the other half is waiting in the wings.

Half a song from the red breast in the tree

still sings of life and many wanton things.

We live by halves, never grasping the whole.

Long ago, the sons of Adam were instructed to slow the roll.

~William Hammett

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