I walk along flowering lanes flanked by hawthorn and gorse, and a car roars by at break-neck speed leaving a cloud of exhaust, and in the ditch they’ve chucked a pile of cigarette butts and, even worse, the remains of fast-food breakfast, plastic packaging and a dirty nappy; obviously, the child’s meal with plastic toy didn’t […]
Month: April 2021
Plum Nelly
Late sun splashes in the summer sky,flashes in the tears every time I seeplump ripe plums hanging in our tree,like the juicy ones she used to buyin brown paper bags to share with me.Their purple musk evokes a sighof scents from grandmother’s scullery;laundry in a copper, hot and bubbly,sprigs of mint, roast on Sunday,cloves and […]
Snow Globe Episode 6
After she married Mitch, she had lost touch with her small circle of friends in England, all busy working or bringing up their children and she had not yet made any friends of her own in New York. The only sympathetic person who always had time for her was her ex-sister-in-law, Sabrina. She called her […]
A Moon Moment
I savour the momentfleeting and seldomof a full-bellied moonhovering over treesa seasonal pausereflected in the eyesof a startled fox Kim M. Russell, 17th April 2021 Free image from dreamstime.com My response to NaPoWriMo Day Seventeen Today, on the seventeenth day of poems in April, we are writing about the moon.
Spring Skeltonic
There’s blossom on the trees and the urgent hum of bees drifts on a gentle breeze that’s tickling my knees. The blackbird stopped his song, he thinks he got it wrong; he’s been silent for so long his voice is not so strong. But as the blossoms fall and bees begin to crawl, the blackbird […]
A smear of lipstick on the way out the door
Mum greeted everyone with a blooming smile,lips frosted pink, applied and blottedbefore leaving our top floor flat. I used to delve into her make-up bag,untwist precious tubes and smearmouth, cheeks and chin with colour. I learned to love carmine caressesof creamy lipstick, blotted with kisses,or left steaming on cups in restaurants. But during this pandemic […]
Cast in Bronze
A single tiny cloudin an otherwise vacant sky, the inkling of a moon –and then the birds arrive, swerving, climbing, swooping,flocking into sunset. As the gold coin dropsinto the slot of night, bird wings briefly singe,cast in a bronze tinge. Kim M. Russell, 14th April 2021 Image by Chris Sabor on Unsplash My response to […]
My name means gold
At least, that’s what a Korean guy told me, who I met in Amsterdam, when I went to buy Matcha and jasmine tea,joss sticks and a brass frog […]
Traces of an Elephant’s Tears (Empathy)
I feel the tears, although there is only a trace now. Just like the baby elephant, alone in the zoo, abandoned with only a memory of the mother it will never forget. And what about the mother’s tears? The tears of the herd? It is not absurd that my maternal instinct rears in despair at […]
14th April 2021 (I may be two days late but I got there finally)
Roused by the brightening of dawn’s light,after the phantoms of the night, a thought stirs in a waking mind,free from the plague of humankind. Like birds, we have been set free to fly,small flocks of shadows in the sky, still masked, but no longer in isolation,with a muffled sigh of liberation. Kim M. Russell, 13th […]
writing in north norfolk 