Originally posted on Xanku:
Dinner with best friends Such a normal thing to do And yet so strange In wet summer air How to judge humidity: How damp is the mask Early dog walkers Smiling at me with their eyes. My glasses fogged up. Three haiku from the 31 Haiku for July series, pulled for…
Month: July 2020
Almost Harvest
no dawn chorus rising later every day sunflowers ripe wheat unmoving in the field a splash of poppies brittle with heat leaves already yellow awaiting release scarecrow silhouette leaning west towards the sun redundancy silent blackbirds in their annual moult counting feathers Kim M. Russell, 30th July 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting […]
A Metaphor Senryu
in love and conflict edit the mood with rhythm and punctuation Kim M. Russell, 29th July 2020 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #30: Writing as a Metaphor for Living This Wednesday, Magaly is hosting from New York, where things are hot, hoping we are ready to play with cool words. For […]
Brent Geese in Autumn
By mid-October, large flocks of dark-bellied geese grate and grumble across grey sky, ticking clouds with wings. They descend on the estuary and spend all winter pecking at eel grass and remains of corn. Their noisy nasal honks pierce autumn twilight like a foghorn, belying the beauty of their flight and the delicate embroidery of […]
Tales of Thorns
Hunched against twilight, unfurling brambles and briars arch with witch’s spite, wiry black liars that prickle and grasp. Night noises regale with twisted tales of thorns, the cost is just a drop of berry red blood to satisfy suckering roots. All is not lost. Kim M. Russell, 27th July 2020 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Avalon
If only I could float through the mists of time in Morgana’s enchanted boat, to the island of the apples, that fertile fortunate isle that is leaf and sunlight dappled: the place where Excalibur was made and Arthur was laid to rest, with nine queens to watch over him. I imagine how I’d find the […]
Ghost Cats and Magpies
Will’s eyes followed the shadow while his fingers untwisted the last ribbon. He took off after it, swiftly but stealthily, slipping behind tree trunks and bushes, not once looking behind him to check if everything was as it should be. The shadow was moving away from the green, towards the other end of the village, […]
Poetichor
The scent of a poem can drive me to distraction, like spores from a page of mildewed putrefaction, accumulated fluff and dust from under the bed, or the grey and blue mould on a slice of old bread; sometimes it’s cherry blossom dancing in trees, an explosion of honeysuckle on a summer breeze, a meadow […]
A Reply to Mother Earth
They read the wildfires, listened to the songs of floods, tornadoes and whales, conversed with owl and eagle, howled with wolves at the full moon. But they ignored them, too attached to throwaway gratification, the centres of their own worlds, to care about the real world. It took a whisper, the gasp of a pandemic, […]
Comfort in Cookies
We stood by a field, watched waves of leafy greenness rolling, wind-blown and whispering, born from earth and sky. We stood and breathed the scent of stiff-stalked oats flourishing and bearing flavoursome, nourishing crisp-cased seeds. I held your hand on that summer walk, a slightly calloused hand normally used to work, sometimes to cook and […]
writing in north norfolk 