Real Life

I crunch them underfoot,
the cockleshells and landslip
of pebbles, among salty
sparkles and guttural gulls
swooping down to steal your chips.

I overwhelm you with my scent
of decaying seaweed
and the thrill of rollercoaster
cliffs, from cuspate crag
to hidden cove.

I chase you down the beach
towards the waves,
offering everything your senses
tell you is honest and true.
Now do you believe me?

Kim M. Russell, 25th March 2025

Image by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash

It’s Tuesday and over at the dVerse Poets Pub we are personifying the abstract for Poetics with Mish, who says:

“One creative tool that we often play with in our poetry is personification. By giving human characteristics, actions and behaviours to non-human entities or inanimate objects we can add some irony, sarcasm and humour or simply express a point in a creative, imaginative way. We might sprinkle personification into our lines sparingly or throw caution to the wind and indulge completely.”

I like the examples she gives of Sylvia Plath’s poem, ‘Mirror’, and Carl Sandburg’s ‘Who Am I?’

Today, Mish challenges us to personify an abstraction using a list of ideas, concepts, emotions, qualities, virtues, stages and events in life, which she has provided, but we may also use our own. She asks us to transform the abstract into a human character or a creature. Give it human-like qualities, features and actions.

I’m still recovering from a hospital procedure, so I reworked an old poem to fit the prompt. I chose to personify ‘honesty’.

38 thoughts on “Real Life”

  2. Oh I felt the same effect as Bjorn did from this piece. If I was wanting to be hunted by anything, it would be honesty, reality, truth. Your imagery and sensory details are stunning and worked so well in this piece.

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  11. I couldn’t help but feel the essence of Sylvia Plath in this one, I could imagine her reading this, maybe it’s the crags. I love the idea of honesty chasing us down, no matter where we may go. Beautifully done.

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    1. Thank you, Diane, for the essence of Plath, a lovely compliment. Honesty will have to find us, since wherever we look these days, we can’t find it.

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  12. The rough, wild beach is where the poet should be, and the poet after all can only be honest.

    With lying comes so much more, too often and it all is starting to drive me into recluse more and more…

    Wonderful poetry, hope you’ll be able to get out for walks soon.

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