The Poetry of William Hammett

Monday, February 7, 2022

In the Wake of the Whale

' 'God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!
Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.

from Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Surely the world has been knocked off its axis,

tilting towards menacing, demonic Betelgeuse

rather than faithful, beatific Polaris,

shattering the righteousness of compass points.

Nature withers at the root, and the time is out of joint.

The sun and rain can no longer sign treaties

or find a fair and just armistice.

Saharan heat boils the Gulf of Mexico

while madmen who cannot add or subtract

clamber up marble steps to proclaim that the sky is falling,

to chant “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

The Black Death breathes heavy on the fool,

the snow leopard curling in its den

outside the icy gates of Tucson

while the San Andreas grinds its stone teeth

in anticipation of human sacrifice.

As for me, I choose to swim in the wake of the whale—

the humpback, right, blue, and gray—

as it travels ancient routes in blue-green grace

and sings love songs now lost in translation.

Let others ply the wake of rush hour traffic.

I choose the mariner’s phosphorescent seas,

flukes carving cursive script, a scripture

rich in liquid vowels and sacred nouns

that speak of Omega’s distant rise

and a return to the bare breast of innocence,

to the spirit hovering over the deep

before it recreates paradise.

~William Hammett

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Monday, January 31, 2022

Every Year

Every year I blow through the calendar date
on which my lungs will cease whispering
and my neurotransmitters will stop sending
the codes that fire imagination into reality

and keep my armature of bones from crumbling into chalk.
Amen and amen. Such blindness is a blessing.
I wish to put on a three-piece suit and dine out
without being chauffeured by a shadow.

In fact, I will kiss a beautiful woman in a crowd
even though her husband,
the size of a side of beef,
knocks the fillings from my molars

with a haymaker that leaves me
just this side of the grave, but smiling.
I will do this and more in blissful ignorance,
like writing notes to myself,

secured to the fridge by a GREATEST DAD magnet,
about what I should remember to do
in 2048, the Year of Our Lord.
I will finish reading The Canterbury Tales

while hiking three miles of the Appalachian Trail,
In the spirit of a true pilgrimage,
I will challenging fellow hikers to a contest
to see who can tell the most outlandish story.

Mine will be about kissing a stranger in a crowd
before needing considerable dental work.
And I will attend Keith Richards’ party
when he reaches a weathered one hundred and two

and consider hanging an IV drip of Jack Daniels.
In the distance is a mountain ten miles high,
its top a piece of granite jutting above the rim
of the forever-reeling earth, the father of tribes

and the bringer of mojo to the young at heart.
That’s my headstone, but it will take me years
to lay my body at its base and say, “Good night.”
I am a modern-day Ulysses, home from the war

but hungry for continued mischief and a BLT.
What would be the point of knowing
that an out-of-control Ferris wheel
might hurl my body into the stratosphere

on some Tuesday afternoon, May twelfth, at 6 p.m.?
I have written my epitaph. It says,
“Death took more than a few jabs at me,
but I was a moving target.”

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Footnotes in the Kingdom of God

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

“Flower in the Crannied Wall”

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Daylilies, lavender, and dianthus

push through sidewalk cracks

next to abandoned factories in dying towns,

reaching for the heaven above the heavens

against all odds on the craps table

that wreaks havoc with the ceaseless circadian.

Old men play chess in the park,

knowing they are checkmated

before they shuffle to the bench

like pawns moving one square or two

into an opening gambit of graves.

The commuter from New Rochelle

folds his paper and stares through the train window,

unable to recall whether he kissed his wife lately

because his memory meanders like a stream.

Rusted farm equipment from the forties

sits on foreclosed acres of bindweed and nettles.

Oh, but it was good when it was good,

with tube radios, freckled children, and fireside chats

fertilizing crops by some sleight of hand

known only to carnival barkers and God.

Lovers kiss as they stroll down the avenue,

oblivious to disapproving stares

while holy men knotted into a lotus quietly meditate

and sunlight slides across a lazy gecko

paying rent on a white Arizona rock.

And then there are the poor and lowly,

who have been diagrammed below the sentence,

yearning only for the syntax of warm beds.

All of these vignettes are short stories and poems,

no more than aspiring asterisks

fallen to the bottom of yellowed pages

in basement archives where silence

is given perpetual lease.

But all are redeemed from oblivion’s yoke,

ransomed from insult and lavender’s decay.

Raindrops quench the daylily’s thirst,

for the first shall be last

and the last shall be first.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, January 19, 2022

A Flower in the Desert

It is a rare flower that can handle hardpan,
that sinks roots into dry, cracked earth
that only dares to dream of silver lines of rain,
fat drops to melt away the grit from unrelenting sun.

It is a miracle that yellow and violet petals,
forgiving of the genocide of its kind,
can remain open to peace and possibility,
only folding their beauty when a cold moon

perches on a jagged peak of igneous shadow,
the pale face of an emperor ruling a wasteland.
But the politics of emptiness is fickle.
The indifferent white demeanor is quickly dethroned

by a smiling yellow dictator
who welcomes only cactus, scrub, sagebrush,
and, in a moment of clemency,
a fair and lonely maiden dressed for court.

I met such a fine lady in the desert of my youth,
when promise had been beaten down
by a wanton weed, dry wedlock
pursuing a scorched earth policy

for the sake of pursuing scorched earth,
blue draining from my eyes,
green fading from my heart.
From the corner of my eye

I spied a flower in the desert,
but I did not have faith that angels would catch me
lest I hurt my foot against a stone.
I stood on the the parapet of the temple,

hesitating for a split second
as I pondered angels and the epiphany of the flower,
then slipped, hurtling towards hardpan,
and awoke, bruised and alone.

Or so the story goes.
Decades later, in moments of fertile recollection
I see yellow and violet
from the corner of my eye.

~William Hammett

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Thursday, January 13, 2022

The Mountain Beyond the Meadow

There is a mountain beyond a field of wildflowers
beyond the rail fence beyond the garden
of daisies, larkspur, evening primrose,
and others that have claimed squatter’s rights.

I can see the three-peaked snow-capped mountain—
I imagine the ridges to be a high priest
flanked by two altar servers in white surplices—
from my kitchen as I open the Chateau L’Evangile merlot

and gaze at this layered study in perspective.
It is as if I were looking into a frame
hanging in a hushed room with wooden floors
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And yet the scene changes
with the moving sun and seasons,
like Monet’s Haystacks or The Houses of Parliament.
When summer heat smothers the helpless plain,

the peaks dance like ballerinas
held hostage by a heat shimmer.
In the winter, these servants of the sky
are an exercise in lapidary,

etched like cut gems glistening
against a background that is painfully blue.
Spring and fall are transitional phrases,
by turns cutting and stripping my garden stalks

or swaying the field grasses with clean zephyrs
or hazy incense offered to whatever god is served
by these dimensions whispering “Closeness, distance,
closeness, distance, but bow also to the intermediary

that keeps them righteously apart.”
I sip the merlot and look at the garden,
fence, meadow, matin-covered mountain,
and realize that the world, organic and mineral,

is circadian, evolving, rhyming with color and shadow.
“Lord, it is good to be here,” St. Peter said
as light and darkness and voices danced around him.
It is good to be in my kitchen, grounded

by pots and pans and a vintage from the valley below
even though the universe is still expanding,
stars flying in all directions like priests and ballerinas
and fireflies carrying seeds to distant worlds.

I am content to raise a toast to humility
and be an infinitesimal part of this kaleidoscopic show.

~William Hammett

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Friday, January 7, 2022

Gardening in the Upper Case

I planted a book of Poems
by Emily Dickinson in my loam —
and it wasn’t long before Vowels
and Consonants — brides and grooms
alphabetical — Behold! —

married and blossomed
into sentences — Verse
that was violet and yellow
and scanned like some Epic —
fit for a Garden — a kingdom

perhaps — though who knows
but the Sower of seeds —
of men and words and deeds
that bear thirty, sixty, a hundredfold—
before the bell of Evening tolls?

I suspect this harvest
contained Nouns in the Upper Case —
since Love has been known
to reveal itself — an Incarnation of sorts —
in bells, colors, and caps

swaying on stalks —
a Choir not forgettable
in the humblest clods of Earth
that seem to know chapter —
and yes — Verse— about Rebirth.

~William Hammett

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Monday, January 3, 2022

The Importance of Buttered Toast

I have never written a poem about a Buddhist monk
because the one I knew would not open the window of his soul.

He was in the business of unconcern and renunciation,
trying to get the hell out of Dodge for good

so that the the great mandala
would not hook his saffron-colored robe

and spin his karma through another lifetime.
He told me that we didn’t really exist,

which to me is like buttering toast
only to find that breakfast is a scam.

I put a period on a blank page and then erased it.
“Now you’re getting the hang of it,” he said.

I didn’t think it was much of a poem
even though he said it was my best work to date

before assuming the lotus position,
as if he were posing for a Moody Blues album cover.

That’s when I put the period back on the page,
a Zen act of pure whoop-dee-doo,

but I still maintain that it wasn’t a poem.
It was merely a bit of untethered punctuation

taught to me by a gaggle of Catholic nuns
who relished living every day in Dodge.

They were sometimes a mean bunch of black and whites,
but we agreed that buttered toast was buttered toast.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Lost and Found

I am not lost.
On the contrary, I found myself
yesterday afternoon sitting in a red cedar chair
in my backyard, staring at birds
or perhaps waiting for the first star to burn
through the dark blue wake of afternoon,

always a sure giveaway that evening
is going to roll up the day,
catalog it, and send it to the museum of days
that is as invisible as the Ark of the Covenant.
I was careful not to disturb myself
since I was listening to a cardinal

perched in a gum tree compose a sonnet
on what it was like to defy gravity
for short periods of time.
White clouds, catching the last rays of sunset,
morphed from mountains into tall ships
with three sails and bowsprit needling the ocean

to stay ahead of advancing darkness
and the undiscovered country of dreams
that could swallow the entire crew
and spices from Turkish bazaars.
I seemed to be happy,
though I had a crease in my forehead

formed by a regret that reminds me
that sometimes I am an imbecile.
I crept away so as not to disturb myself,
glad to know that I was needling the ocean
and staying ahead of the jim-jams.
There will come a time

when I will erase the regret like a Cavalier poet.
I will defy gravity and soar
through the undiscovered country
that cannot be avoided forever.
For now, I am found,
content to let the cardinal be my prophet

and tell me in verse what it is like
to be free of regret and the sloping ground.

~William Hammett

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Thursday, December 23, 2021

Christmas Eve

It is about the nativity, of course,
although it has not happened yet.
The pregnant possibility lies in the straw,
heavy with the promise of a New Jerusalem

that is far too distant
even for angels and shepherds to see.
Carols are sung about the imminence
that has not yet risen in the silent night.

It is all about what happens next.
Expectation hangs like an ornament
on the fir by the fire.
Royalty from Persia left their kingdoms years ago,

but the caravan has no arrived yet.
The magi are as curious as you or I.
Why else make the journey
on suspicions raised by a rogue comet?

Blind men and lepers are already lined up in Galilee.
For what, they do not know.
There are rumors about rumors
and a quickening of the pulse—nothing more.

The unwed mother in the Bowery knows this truth,
as does the junkie who throws away the needle
because he saw an angel in his delirium.
The rehab center was always in Bethlehem.

The alarm clock sings, and I pull myself out of bed.
Tonight, I am told, is about magic,
and I’m willing to place my bet on a mustard seed.
Why else make the journey?

~William Hammett

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Sunday, December 19, 2021

Blue Jay

Bluebird, bluebird,
tap me on the shoulder.
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

~children’s nursery rhyme

Its harsh, shrill cry
scratches the dark blue evening sky,
demanding our attention,
threatening to rip open the heavens
and expose the eye of Armageddon.

Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah
did the same with stubborn Israel,
pointing the finger,
exposing the lie,
calling men out
on the collective cerebral cortex
scrubbed clean of truth
so that lackeys might kiss the stone feet
of the idol deaf and dumb.

The D.C. metro bus carries freight
shuttled in from the Land of Nod.
Exhaust spills into the ozone
as men and women spill into a puddle of brain
while the jay shouts “Cry Havoc!
And let slip the dogs of war.”

Evening grows darker
as the jay finishes his screed.
We have been tapped on the shoulder,
roughed up in soul,
delivered to a fork in the road
by a crest of blue feathers.

I pour a tumbler of scotch.
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

~William Hammett

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Monday, December 13, 2021

Calypso

Ah yes, there was the summer of ’78,
which I had almost forgotten in these latter days
of statins and twice around the block
in the evenings beneath the sheen of pine needles
so that my pulleys and gears will stay lubricated
and the bellows behind my ribs will keep
rush hour traffic flowing smoothly in my arteries.

The thesis and diploma were tucked away
where they could do neither harm nor good.
I had learned earlier that pulling one thread the wrong way
unravels the tapestry of blossoming love.
I painted murals in the air for no one,
an avant-garde hermit who lived in a basement apartment
and read “Dover Beach” one too many times.

The white sands of Jamaica—
well, that was a different story in the anthology,
so I puddle-jumped to Kingston Town
and bought a twenty-dollar guitar,
a beach umbrella, and too many cocoanuts
with umbrellas sprouting like new growth
from rum or tequila and the juice of the day.

At night, when small fires blazed like eyes opening,
and the beach was filled with lovers
or other refugees who had too much of nothing
and were sampling Dylan’s waters of oblivion,
I played for whitecaps and sea birds wheeling,
notes lost in the surf folding onto the beach,
songs hanging in the air for no one.

It was one evening when the full moon
sat on the rim of the world,
the atmosphere molding its shape into an ellipse,
a silver eye with a tint of orange,
that I sat up, arms folded around my knees,
and knew that, despite bikinis and calypso drums,
the spirit hovering over the deep
was watching me and always would be.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, December 8, 2021

A Thousand Sitars

The song turned out to be prophetic.
Something was going to happen
in the black mining hills of Dakota,
and the building had been named
because the stones rose from a desolation
that looked like the upper Midwest in winter.

The people in the cheap seats had clapped.
Those in the box seats had rattled their jewelry.
The performers bowed,
and the curtain came down.

When it came up again,
time slipped forward,
careening past naked light bulbs
strung like daisy chains on Coney Island
into a purple haze,
and Max Yasgur leased his farm
to his children’s children’s children
as a generation turned over in its grave.

The curtain came down again
during Monday Night Football.
Bob sang “roll on, John,”
and all cried grief for the bull.

I looked in the rearview mirror
over the long years,
the music always there,
Sometimes in dreams I hear sitars chanting
like a thousand monks on a mountain top.

I still hear them,
though I don’t have to play the vinyl backwards.
I pick up a guitar on most days
and get back to where I once belonged.

~William Hammett

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Friday, December 3, 2021

A Tree in Barcelona

Manicured cottonwood trees line the square
in Old Town, a space that looks as if Don Quixote
might amble through the space on his horse

at any moment, tilting at windmills as usual
as he sleeps and dreams his impossible dreams.
It is only a painting in a museum,

but I step into the frame and sit beneath a small elm,
bent as if it were a peasant woman or farmer
bending to pick up a potato.

It is a pleasant day, and I lean against the trunk,
legs crossed on the grass
as I survey the red tile rooves

and the brown arches of a building
that appears to be a hotel built in the Middle Ages.
I can hear the ceiling fans pushing air

through the open air and across the plaza into my face.
A plump woman walks down a cobbled street in the distance,
a baby riding her hips and bouncing

as gently as Don Quixote,
who has now checked into the hotel.
The elm tree whispers that I am welcome to stay.

I agree even though I know that in this perpetual afternoon
someone from the twenty-first century
will pull me from the picture.

Or perhaps it will be a noise,
the door to the museum closing
or a taxi horn disturbing the seventeenth century.

I close my eyes.
There is no hurry.
Like Adam, I will get kicked out of paradise

because a woman has spoken with a snake
about apples and my tenure on the canvas.
But I will return when the time is right.

I have found a mansion in my Father’s house
that, though humble, suits me fine.
A gold plaque above the frame reads

“A Tree in Barcelona.”
It knows nothing of good and evil,
nor is it a windmill.

~William Hammett

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