a sigh of seeding grasses purple-mists the marshes where sea touches shingle with a salty, osculating tingle. Flagrantly expansive August sky – empty of birds but clouds sail by – breathes sun-warmed rusty seaweed, samphire and yellow agrimony, and then blows harder in an attempt to float a sea-loving, pebble-beached boat. Kim M. Russell, 2017
Category: Poems about Norfolk
Wherryman
Evening and wherryman rolls sails to the sound of dry reeds on the banks the constant rustling and whistling grey herons and avocets bobbing on the waves otters anoint their territory to the east of this shimmering Norfolk Broad the sun always sets […]
Sunday Morning Inspiration
I get up early while you’re still asleep; avoiding the cats, I creep down the stairs, try not to wake you with my leaden feet, stumble over work boots and into chairs. The bathroom floor’s cold, and the toilet seat, the sink is laced with toothpaste and stray hairs. The cat litter smells and they […]
Norfolk Sights and Sounds
windmills and flat landscapes coastal curves and seascapes white sails flash on Broads folded fields and sedgy meadows fruit in orchards and in hedgerows wriggling country roads plopping frogs and gurgling shallows trumpeting geese and warbling swallows rumbling tourist boats Norfolk twang and magpie’s cry commingle as the world slips by diminuendo of minor notes […]
River Sounds
The river gleams dully between trees and gate, tossing tethered boats, setting ropes a-jingle as they wait to be released among hissing reeds and creaking willows. A whistling whirr of wings underscores a skein of honking geese unravelling across high clouds, broken by the raucous cry of a black-headed gull, a permanent marker in a […]
Heart’s Compass
I spent years in different places, painting walls and hanging blinds. I got to know many faces, landscapes, tastes and sounds, lacing fragile ties and pulling them apart again before I could acclimatise to nuances of sun and rain. I longed for a little place where I could set down roots, pulling it on each day […]
Pub Crawl
Norwich once had a pub for every day of the year. Old Norwich boys supped at the Adam and Eve, and in the Angel Gardens. Taverns tracked artisans, life and livelihood through The Beehive and The Brickmakers, Dyers, Plasterers and Bakers Arms, wielding Trowel and Hammer or a fishing rod for the Compleat Angler, and […]
North Norfolk Mammoth (reprise)
Amongst mounds of stones and sand at the foot Of crumbling cliffs, where Norfolk juts its chin, Stubborn and defiant as King Canute Watching the waves roll out and crash back in On flat landscape from Yarmouth to King’s Lynn, A rich treasury of ancient fossils, Cached by glaciers in the primeval Landscape almost a […]
At the Gatehouse
My response to A Dash of Sunny Prompt Nights On Popular Demand – Lets gather around for some ghost stories – [8] Sanaa has asked us to gather around for some ghost stories, either a poem or a fiction piece, and for inspiration gave us the poems: ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by John Keats, ‘Mad […]
Late Afternoon on a Norfolk Wherry
My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meter-Made Mood–dVerse Meeting the Bar Victoria has challenged us to write a poem that illustrates how meter contributes to the mood of a poem. His face is traced and creased by Norfolk gales, His skin tanned Van Dyke brown as wherry sails, The wherryman sits on the tiller […]
writing in north norfolk 