The Memory of You, 1976

It is from an earlier chapter
written decades ago, a page
penned right before Jimmy Carter and Nixon’s ghost
briefly took the stage.

It was all real, not an idle diversion
or sabbatical from the courses I’d run.
No, young nymph, you were my dear,
and I trust you knew my love

was palm to palm and always near
wherever we took our sport:
the Quarter, the lake, some dark tavern
or theater in which our fingers were laced and lapped,

if you catch my drift.
You always knew my inner gears,
the turning of unspoken words,
some fleeting thought not yet formed by lips

otherwise engaged in moist red dances
or afternoon gin and tonic sips.
And I knew your eddies and currents as well.
Not everyone can cast such a synchronistic spell.

We could have talked in pidgin for hours
and always known the warp and woof,
known what was yours and mine,
but mostly ours.

I wrote a much longer poem,
a message in a bottle
with all the whys and wherefores
on a parchment in palimpsest,

a metaphysical conceit
that unlocked all locked doors,
but what purpose would be served?
Since you could not wait for time and tide forever,

it is fitting that all righteousness be observed.
I occasionally sit in an abbey nave,
quite alone, counting saints.
St. Peter says my eye to you should not now roam.

St. Jude whispers that you, with grace,
have found a shining hearth and home.
I am glad, and tell him so,
for I could wish no less

than spinning wheels and looms
for one whose tapestry was so rich
and held the promise of gold
in each and every stitch.

My lost horizon will always have a bookmark
to hold the page, the months that passed that year,
but your couplet deserved a fitting rhyme
when my meter stumbled and lost its cadence for a time.

Just know this, my ever-cherished love and friend:
you were indeed a rainbow coming around the bend
in my once upon a time. No less.
No less.

New Poetry

New poems may now be viewed at The Poetry of William Hammett.

A Little Foolishness

(The following appeared on a website promoting a novel I wrote a few years ago. At the time, I was determined not to put up the same old bio.)

Hammett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was an aristocratic anarchist; his mother was a pearl diver for the Ceylon Import and Export Company. He contracted yellow fever when he was four, and after a long period of recuperation, he was arrested many times for shoplifting garden supplies from Woolworth’s. Accordingly, he was placed in Miss Clara Pottinger’s School for Suspect Children. His teen years were uneventful, discounting numerous accusations by debutantes and their fathers. Nothing was ever proven in a court of law, this being long before reliable DNA testing.

When only nineteen, Hammett was kidnapped and brought to Ireland, where he was forced to hand out political leaflets advocating celibacy for local politicians whose progeny was consistently disappointing the local electorate. He escaped to Dublin, where he eventually married Molly Dwyer O'Grady, who later starred in Irish Spring soap commercials in America.

The marriage was ill-fated, and Hammett worked his way back to the States on a merchant marine vessel after his divorce from O’Grady, who had insisted that her husband join The Sons of Irish Liberty Pleasure Club. Back in Louisiana, he purchased his law degree from Tulane University. Failing the bar exam three times running, he played the banjo at night in local jazz clubs in the French Quarter. By day, he was a writer, publishing the now-famous juvenile series The Muffin Twins, mysteries starring Judy and Julie Muffin, Siamese twins who could really put their heads together to solve high crimes and misdemeanors.

Hammett married the beautiful and exotic Baroness Maria del Mariposa and moved to a posh Garden District mansion haunted by the Rotomandino family—seven brothers who died in a tragic trapeze accident. He began writing adult fiction, and has received such honors as The Best New Writer to Emerge in Years Award and The Azalea Society’s Annual Award for Lengthy Prose. His wife died in 1996 in an accident involving a barbecue pit and the family’s beloved terrier, Noodles. He now writes as food critic for Wine and Trout Weekly, Amazing Hushpuppies, and Crabs. He is also author of several volumes of poetry, which have been labeled by one critic as “undeniable verse.”

Copyright, 2001, William Hammett

White Water Bend

Down by the creek, under trees,
where foam washes a green sound
over gray stones
in the undiscovered country,
I cannot stop thinking
of wheel ruts up the road—
always the same road—
of concrete cracked with dark veins
threaded through the years
in front of the feed store—
always the same store—
where I swing sweet oats
over a sour shoulder
that turns toward sunset
and a wagonload that rocks my bones
farther down the ruts to death.

But the rushing water—this water—
never sings the same note twice.
The finch catching fire
in the poplar above the canopy
tells me that all rivers marry the sea.
I have been single and sour too long.
No life should know the imprint of a road
well enough to travel by Braille.

I taste the white water.
Vines threaded through woods
are alive and supple,
veins connected to some underground heart
that is now my own heart—
not the same heart.

With the sweet smell of a bride in the air,
there is no turning back.
I will marry the sea.
I am a green sound
washing over gray stones.

Copyright, William Hammett, 1999. First Published in POEM, a journal of the Hunstville Literary Association.