Broken Landscape

September’s come to its inevitable ending
and the light is bending.

Late afternoon sun puts the moon to shame,
setting leaves aflame,

sparking rosehip, hawthorn and rowan berries—
winter’s emissaries.

Soon russet and gold will turn to muddy brown,
and leaves fall down.

October echoes in a jackdaw murmuration;
for them, no migration.

Twilight seeps through naked branches early.
The moon’s fingernail is pearly.

As the clocks go back the landscape will splinter
in the cruel claw of winter.

Kim M. Russell, 1^st October 2026

This Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub we are exploring a Poetry Form with Grace and breaking up the couplet by trying out some creative and challenging ways to write couplets, which sounds simple enough: two lines that belong together, joined by thought, rhythm, rhyme, or a combination of all three.

And then she asks: What happens when we disturb the bond between a couplet? And gives us three ways to break it.

Our challenge is to choose one of the following:

Broken Couplet — disrupt the expected relationship between the two lines.

Split Couplet — experiment with a longer first line and a shorter second line.

Hinged Couplet — let the second line turn, transform, or change the meaning of the first.

Rhyme and meter are optional—the only rule is to let the two lines change each other.

I chose the split couplet.