Despite tender green leaves
and a proliferation of flowers
the world is upside down.
Hills rise over the sun, above
them rivers run, bombs
and drones darken skies.
Blinkered men are intent on killing
one another until Earth
stops spinning.
Why can’t they stop
and smell the scent of spring
permeating everything?
In this spring reversal, innocent civilians
become corpses and tragic orphans.
Kim M. Russell, 26th March 2026
It’s Thursday and this week at the dVerse Poets Pub it’s Open Link Night, when we link up one poem of our choice or write to the optional mini prompt.
This week Mish is our host, and she has given us two images by the French Symbolist print maker and painter Olidon Redon (1840-1916), together with interesting background information about the artist.
Rather like van Gogh and his sunflowers, Redon produced more than one composition entitled ‘Spring’ (Le Printemps). Mish has chosen one from 1883 and another from 1910.
writing in north norfolk 
Yes another senseless war Kim. Sadly men will go on doing this until the end of time. Your poem reminds us of what we stand to lose. The innocents.😢💔
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Death in spring renders the vernal panoply obscene & haunts poems like this. A grey canopy, for sure. Redon must have sensed the blinkering of the time with this decidedly fin-de-siecle Maid Marian gazing at the greenwood wedding like it was her funeral. With all the cannonades cocked, loaded and impatient.
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