the end, not just the prelude to the death of April, but the final word, the last amen? Tomorrow Is a fresh sheet of paper for another poem, a breezy tune for a new song, the first breath of the first day of the rest of your life, to do with what you want. I’ll […]
Month: April 2020
Almost (a love story)
almost burned her fingers as she watched a flame consume a match almost to its end almost cried at the pain that didn’t come but the tears were welcome anyway almost fell in love with the man who struck the match that lit her (almost) last cigarette almost kissed him on the lips before the […]
Florence
She is surrounded by patchwork fields as vivid as an artist’s impression: here and there a stone church or umber farmhouse scattered across her apron stained with hues of olive, grape, tomato, and scented with rosemary, basil, oregano, zesty lemons and aromatic espresso. She stretches her limbs along the Arno, terracotta roofs reflecting heat and […]
Mind Map of a Forgotten Coast
Our coastal skin shrank as knowledge grew; why have we forgotten paths and dunes devoured by an increasingly hungry sea? Never sated, the leviathan lingers on the shore until its rumbling belly sends it back for more. Ancient rock has turned to crumbling cliffs and sand. There are no maps to fathom what lies beneath, […]
Reading is No Sin
I’ve never heard a mockingbird, a New World multilingual, and I’ve never seen one fly. But I have climbed inside numberless books, read numberless words, breathed numberless characters’ lives, walked around in their skin and thought their thoughts. Characters are the only kind of folk I ever felt comfortable with, willingly lent my reader’s ear, […]
Shakespeare First
I have always loved Will’s work from the moment I was introduced to his plays at school, and I remember falling in love with the sonnets as if it was only yesterday. The first poems I wrote as a teenager were sonnets and I still fall into the form when I least expect it. The […]
Served from the Heart (revisited)
l u r […]
A Moment
I took a real moment, not a virtual corona one, to step out into the garden, under cover of the darkest night. White noise and rustle of leaves – the only human sound was the distant hum of tyre on tarmac, a delivery truck perhaps. It was quiet and so dark I could not see […]
Heavy Suitcase
They took away my suitcase. There wasn’t much in it: a book to read, clean underwear, a nice dress for visiting hours (no one ever comes) and church on Sundays, moisturising cream for my hands and face. I didn’t think I’d be here long. Now I need to fill it with the weight of nightmare […]
Tesselated
honeycomb hexagons too narrow for fingers but just right for bees conjuring honey from pollen tidy and tessellated sticky-sweet Kim M. Russell, 24th April 2020 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo Day 24 Play it Again in April 2020: Wild Woman’s Natural Wonders On Wednesday 24th April, 2019, Sherry inspired us with […]
writing in north norfolk 