In our garden we have green daffodil leaves, a small clump of snowdrops, buds on the cherry tree and honeysuckle tendrils. I’ve seen catkins dangling from branches and fuzzy pussy willow buds on my way to and from home. And we have cock pheasants strutting about noisily, facing up to each other. Mother Nature hums […]
Category: Haibun
And we begin again
The new year always makes me melancholy. The idea of having to start all over again is depressing, having been through it so many times in my life. I try to ignore it. On New Year’s Eve, I shut the curtains on fireworks and revelry, read a book and listen to music. The next day […]
Hawk Moth Caterpillar
When I was little, we lived with my grandparents and later, when my parents had a place of their own, I spent most of the summer holidays with them. If I wasn’t staying over, my nan would collect me in the morning and take me all the way back at the end of the day. […]
Labour Day
No wonder they call it labour – it’s hard work! The build-up was difficult enough, what with the move from Germany to Ireland via London, getting to know new people and surroundings, having to travel forty miles and back to the nearest hospital for check-ups, and then falling over a paving stone on my way […]
Hiroshima Shadow
Where a bicycle bell once tinkled, a memorial bell now tolls. When the clouds lifted and radioactive dust had settled, only shadows remained, ghosts burned into concrete, brick and stone, haunting the ash-covered landscape. What happened to the bike and its owner? Only the faded outline remained, and the hope that someone returned and rode […]
Summer Love
Since they were children, they’d ridden their bikes all summer, at first with stabilisers, and their bikes grew with them. This year, hair bleached from the sun and faces full of freckles, they realised their friendship had blossomed. ticking cycle wheels grasshoppers in the long grass strawberry kisses Kim M. Russell, 31st July 2019 My […]
Beach Party Haibun
I don’t think I have ever attended a beach party, but when I lived in Cologne all those years ago, I often spent summer days with friends at a Baggerloch, a man-made lake, swimming and sunbathing until it got chilly, then we’d light a fire to cook food, play guitar, sing, and drink Kölsch and […]
Swan skims the water
Swan skims the water dips its beak into molten orange sun-spill, breaks the meniscus that keeps the dark depths in before lifting its wings upwards into pink and violet layers of sky a single white feather rocks on ripples Kim M. Russell 12th July 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1701 sundown (or sunset) one-bun […]
Lest We Forget
I’m not one for parades or any kind of gathering where there are crowds of people – they panic me, and I feel unsafe. I prefer to keep the memory of the people who died at war with a poppy on 11th November, known as Remembrance Sunday. There are many kinds of poppy these days, […]
Picnic Under the Stairs
When I was nine or ten, we moved from a two-bedroom ground floor maisonette to a three-bedroom top floor maisonette on the same estate. I got the box room: it had a huge box that was the top of the stairs, which took up almost a quarter of the floor space, leaving room for a […]
writing in north norfolk 