I spend early mornings on my own, from any time between five thirty and six thirty until about nine thirty or even lunchtime, depending on what the day ahead holds. It is, for me, the best time to write. With just the cats for company and a wonderful view of our garden, I hole up […]
Month: April 2018
Lithophile
Dawdling spring starts to lift winter’s dreich and brumy veil from saturated inky hills, revealing cobalt palimpsests on elephantine grey. Outcrops of land-slid indigo form walls dividing pitch and roll, cross ragged seams of paths and tracks through brown and ochre soil riddled with lumps of flint and shale. In the distance, a sliver of […]
Binding with Briars
I bind you with a hedge of spiteful briars from the ensorcelled heart of a midnight forest, a rose hidden from men’s desires for a hundred years incanted in a white-hot rage of Beltaine blossom on a thorny cage. Young men will come to press their suit; I’ll pluck and spear their ripened fruit, stick […]
Praying One-Bun
On First Seeing ‘Praying Hands’ by Dürer… those honest hands captured in ink, I began to understand spirituality captured in ink, fingers gently pressed in prayer – oh, to draw such hands! Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Carpe Diem #1411 Praying (one-bun) Today we have a short episode: our task is to create a […]
Stringing Daisies
When I was little, my grandparents had a very small garden: a patch of grass surrounded by flowers, crowded together in their flowerbeds. But my favourite flowers were daisies. Nanny taught me to slit the stalk with my fingernail and thread the daisies into a chain. April surprises rain puddles between grass stalks flowering raindrops […]
Lingering day…
is painted in pointillist shadows and shades. Light, fading with the last echoes of birdsong, clings to moon and stars. It’s a time when bats and owls swoop, skim and dodge in and out of branches not yet dressed in blossom or leaves, but pregnant with promise. silhouetted moon ascends from roof to ancient ash […]
Voices in a Late Summer Garden
Honeysuckle paints a pale sunset along the garden wall,a tumbling clown, with its tendrils dangling down. Above the constant buzz of pollen-coatedbees, I catch a cockeyed conversation. ‘Get down, you silly girl, you’ll get stuck! I can’t […]
Winter Crow
wind battered crows ascend from a naked tree leafy silhouettes Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Carpe Diem’s Crossroads #6 A Leafless Tree (Soseki Natsume) We have a new episode of the special feature ‘’crossroads’, a challenge to create a ‘fusion haiku’ from two given haiku. This week both haiku were written by Soseki […]
Beach
sandy footprints fade promises echo in echo in shells holiday romance Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Carpe Diem’s Romancing Haiku #1 beach For this first episode of Carpe Diem’s new feature Romancing Haiku, the theme is ‘the beach’.
writing in north norfolk 