This mid-January morningall the blemishes are coveredand soil scars have been stitchedby the dusty blackbird’s tracks. Even the washing looks whiter,not frozen stiff, but dancing, blownby the wind that brought the snow. Kim M. Russell, 16th January 2021 A chilly little poem for earthweal open link weekend #53
Hagstone
Earth, wind, fire and water, each of them a divine daughter, waged a war on heaven and earth, so powerful that it gave birth to weather-witches, hags and crones, who traded in claws and bones, feathers, fangs, skulls and shells, to strengthen herbs and magic spells. Each bound to their own element, some witches crooned […]
A Blackened Sky
Clouds billowed thunderous greyabove charcoal stalks of heather. Trees held their breath all wind-filled day,browbeaten by the bullying weather. As if by lightning strike, a leafless oakexploded into jet-black blossoming: a magnanimous murder of crowsbroke from the darkness cawing, burst into the blackened sky,their sooty feathers spread and soaring. Kim M. Russell, 13th January 2021 […]
This is not a carved box
but the heart of a treea remnant of mean accumulation of scentsthe essence of adolescenceand early adulthooda repository for bad and gooddifferent lives and different timesan amalgam of stories and rhymes Kim M. Russell, 12th January 2021 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Object Poems Mish is back to host this Tuesday’s Poetics with […]
I Am a Swan
For years I feltlike a brown duckdabbling and upendingin poetic shallow water, tugging at words and lineslike duckweed and worms,pulling them into forms. One day, I felt the spanof my wings growand began to soarwith sonnets. Kim M. Russell, 11th January 2021 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille: Dabbling in Poetry De is our […]
Poems in the Frost
At the break of a chilly day,when the ghostly winter-greybark of beech trunks glintedin the low sun, I squintedand found, written in the frost,as if they had recently been lost,a scattering of words: poems scratched by birds,the cursive trail of a snail,the imprint of a pattern of ovalfox pads, toes of mole and mouse,just outside […]
Ludwig’s Friday Morning
Originally posted on writing in north norfolk:
My response to FRIDAY FICTION with RONOVAN WRITES Prompt Challenge #11 It was hard to choose a favourite song but I love the picture Joni Mitchell paints of Beethoven in ‘Judgement of the Moon and Stars’, so I took the first line from that song. No tongue in…
On the Fourth Anniversary of Your Death
Like the sky maps sketchedin the bird brains of the geeseflying overhead this morningin their flocks and vees,your gentle face is etchedinto my genealogy.I hear their honk and chatterloud and clear; they fly byas if it doesn’t matterthat a day cannot be erasedby hoar frost. Yes, it’s here again,sparkling like it did four years ago,stiffening […]
Dance of Joy
Beethoven shoutedhis incomprehensible joy,a wind that daredthe whole worldto dance helter-skelter,glitter on the river,to dance as melody,irresistible harmony,a symphonyto nature’s inhuman splendour:the gust,the tide,the breaking vinein the figure of a dance. Kim M. Russell. 7th January 2021 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #51: Looking Back and Writing Forward, also linked to […]
In conversation with the aged librarian
Sonnets echo through the shelves of the library, disturbing ancient dust and ghosts of poets lost, to keep you company, stir your memory, protect your heart and soul from time’s frost. Among your books, you are never alone, with full moon or candle to shed light. Besides, heart-learnt words in blood and bone blossom into […]
