Kay wasn’t surprised when she discovered the husband, Robert, in a corner of Edith’s garden, another friendly ghost. He never spoke, just lifted his cap in greeting. She started to listen out for his faint whistle and quite liked the smell of pipe smoke that drifted over the fence. Besides Kay, the only visitors to […]
Month: January 2021
Opening Time
It’s raining old women and sticks; the lights are on, but the pub’s still closed. They’re gasping for pints and packets of crisps, squeezed tight together under the awning, from which fat globules of water drip, trickle off ends of unkempt hair and find their way past grimy collars. Between the telephone box and bike […]
If
there hadn’t been hesitant sleetthat eventually turned to snowheaped like hills on the empty street, it might not have fluttered silently,like luminescent moths outsidethe window, a continued quietude when the flakes ceased gentlyfalling, that might not have been brokenby the boisterous warble of a robin. Kim M. Russell, 27th January 2021 My response to Poets […]
Sad Song
“The clear vowels rise like balloons” S.Plath ~ Morning Song A favourite song floats into the mind on a passing whimsical wind, prompted by a blackbird’s incidental trill or the postman’s whistle, and I am there again, mouth wide open, lungs bursting with the thrill, in a crowd of hearts beating to the same rhythm […]
On the Way Back
She had swum too far, felt the power of waves tugging her towards the horizon before striking back to shore. On the way back, when she reached out her puckered hand, she felt like beach pebbles scattered by the sea in ever shifting sand. Kim M. Russell, 25th January 2021 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Holme
It sounds like home. It’s a morning walk on a Norfolk beach,wind strewing salty seaweedlike hair on a northerly breeze. The flatness hid the traces. It was a sea henge with an upturned oak stumpat the centre of a Bronze Age ring of trunks:fifty-five split and ancient hearts of oak. And hearts were split. Some […]
Next Door’s Ghosts Episode 2
Of course, she told her neighbour, and Edith was not surprised. “That’s my cat, Maurice.” She smiled. “He was run over before he was six months old, and we buried him in the garden. But he preferred your garden, it always was a bit of a jungle.” The little old lady in the corner grinned, […]
The Fencing in of Rainbows
The first Visual Verse image of the year by Michael Easterling was beautiful but tricky. My poem in January’s Visual Verse is on page 33. As always, I recommend reading all the poems in the issue but, if you want to go straight to mine, it’s called ‘The Fencing in of Rainbows‘. You can also […]
A Cup of Winter Tea
Steaming cup in hand, I shiver outdoorsas the moon freezesin a cloud of mist and sequin starsnot even northern breezescan penetrate the chill from Earth to MarsI know that under the snowplants sprout and bulbs are ready to unfoldand the tea I made half an hour agois stone cold Kim M. Russell, 20th January 2021 […]
Joining the Dots
Like a child with an activity book, I join up the dots, spy with my little eye pictures in earth and sky, from horizon to horizon: the shapes of flocks of birds, clouds and the occasional rainbow – which must be coloured in. We are joined by bone […]
writing in north norfolk 