A city empty of children in a cold, dystopian shell(Janice Turner, The Times, 15th April 2023) After the war, years of hiding,and bombs destroying homes, mothers and children return to subsidingcities of bare bones. Soldiers came, conscienceless;now they’re gone, immune to emptiness, hunger and despair, whilehomeless survivors watch the afterbirth of contrails fade in the […]
Why?
Why do honeysuckle blooms spill their fragrance in the night? When morning sun creeps between slats in shutters, whyare dust motes ignited like fireworks? And later, the lens of day’s diminishing light freezes in the finalblaze of sunset, capturing a heron’s trailing gangly legs. Why does spring arrive in starts and stops like a dripping […]
Not Forgotten
Mum sat in the twilight of her room, staring ahead, arthritic fingers twisted around themselves, trembling, lips moving but emitting no sound. ‘Hello Mum!’ I tried to be cheerful but there was no response, and I couldn’t read her expression in the gloom, so I switched on the standard lamp that stood next to her […]
The Non-Taste of Tea
On my lapI feel a warm cat,and in my handmy favourite cupof cranberry and raspberry. But there is nofruity burst on the tongue,just heat in my mouththat no longer spreadsto the cockles of my heart.No heightening of the senses.No calm. I hear myself breathe.I watch a poem bloom from the leaves. Kim M. Russell, 12th […]
Losing the Sounds of Spring
Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground.The mildest February for twenty yearsIs mist bands over furrows, a deep no soundVulnerable to distant gargling tractors. Seamus Heaney In the north, the Plough is ridden by the moonand frost continues to clench the earth.On this early morning walk there are no words,no lines from puffs of frozen […]
Springing
They are springing upeverywhere I look: waxy little snowdropsbobbingin small clumps orcarpetingbetween trees. They’re amongthe hellebores and crocuses,flirting with fritillaries,and sucking upto cyclamen— a spring ball of dancing flowerssoaking up spring sun and showers. Kim M. Russell, 9th February 2026 For the first dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille of February, De asks us to write poems […]
Stolen by the Breeze
On stone pillows, the dead sleep soundly.but the cicada’s seventeen sad syllablesare immediately stolen by the breeze. In the morning quiet of the cemetery,the haiku master writes a eulogy, whileon stone pillows, the dead sleep soundly. Lost in his task, he dips his brushin a pot of black ink, and he hears nothingbut the cicada’s […]
Likened to Icy Auroras
In the wild configurationof a Norfolk night,where weathersmells like peat and moss, we are at peace— Until we are wokenby snow-light through blinds,dazzling our eyes,everything needled with ice as if speckled with stars. So we venture outto stare at the whiteness—instead we are metwith watermelon sky turning colours like a kaleidoscope. In that momentwe are […]
I didn’t know about Groundhog Day…
until I saw the film and, even then, it didn’t make much sense to me. We don’t have groundhogs in the UK and, these days, particularly where I live, not so much snow, for which I am grateful! What we do have is snowdrops, one of the signs of spring on which I know I […]
Thirty-Three Years On
Thirty-three years have passed in theblink of an eye and the tasteof those first kisses still lingers, ofsea salt on the wind that tied ustogether. I remember theexcitement, the spice,the excitement ofbeing us. Can you remember therolling waves and their hollers,the crash of the rollers andsuck of the ebb? I still feel thepull, the melodies […]
writing in north norfolk 