To a young child, the jagged edge of paper poked out like a tongue from the machine slung round the conductor’s neck. ‘Any more fares, please?’ With a rattle of his handle he conjured a miniature scroll, a ticket printed with conundrums to last the big red bus ride home. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My […]
Category: Poems about Childhood and Youth
Grandmother’s Shoes
She had a closet full of shoes she wouldn’t throw away, reminders of the comfy days when every shoe would fit. For me, it was a treasure trove of giant shoes for a four-year-old to slide across the lino, Ginger to my grandfather’s Astaire. I was completely unaware of the agony of her size three […]
Sugar Rush of Imagination
In foolish figments, the wild willowwacks of child- hood, I am myrmidon to my master chocolate. My stash is hidden in entangled tree trunks; knots and holes encircle glints of wrapper and my dark greed, the eccentric need for sugar that makes me jump when Mother discovers crumbs and smears on the bedclothes. Kim M. […]
Midsummer Verges
Content in our garden’s leafy shade, I think back to weedy margins on a distant council estate, full of dandelions and significance, between pan-hot pavement and simmering black tar, a strip of withered grass, litter-strewn and dotted with dog mess, where bike wheels used to spin, click, tick; children clutched coins in sweaty hands at […]
Guitar Sunsets
My passion as a teenager was playing the guitar, contorting fingers into chords and positions, resonating waltz and polka from the sound hole of a Yamaha, plucking delicate arrangements of Bach and Scarlatti. Now my fingers will not stretch across neck and frets, too stiff and sore to press on strings, too clumsy for harmonics […]
Granddad’s Garden
Confined to house and wireworks walls, he was a caged animal picking tiny nuggets of copper from boot soles like thorns from paws. Every week day, at one for dinner and at five for tea, deep in the fabric of his work clothes and his very being, he carried home the metallic tang of blood […]
This Little Piggy
A little girl holds on to a chair, teetering in her mother’s shoes, shiny leather stilettos, her feet squashed down into the toes. Granny smiles, forgets for a moment the bunions on her aching feet, the pain when walking down the street, the raw skin and unbearable heat. After bath time, with pyjamas on, they […]
Que Sera
I wanted to grow up like Doris Day just walking in the rain with Johnny Ray – whatever will be will be. My dad was the great pretender and, for me, there was only you, Mum, singing to Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole, loving me as though there were no tomorrow. Granddad had the mellow […]
A South London Heaven
Across the football pitch on this side of the rails is wild fennel and long grass: a jungle for snails. There’s a wild damson tree, hawthorn and crab apples, where we lie, you and me, below leafy dapples. In summer there’s sunshine, in winter there’s snow; I love spring and autumn, when trees bloom and […]
Anticipation
A project for the summer, you said, shaking the yellow curls on your head and, opening up your sweaty hand, offered me hard seeds with zebra bands. The teacher had given you a little sack and, like Jack’s mother, I was full of doubt, prepared to throw them out. Where would we grow sunflowers in […]
writing in north norfolk 