Backlit by counterpoints of sunlight, your face a harmony of shadows, fingers merge with black and white, release major chords of red and yellow, and mournful minors, grey and blue. They shift between darkness of minus and lightness of plus, shades of you and me, until a sunbeam, dotted with motes of a melody, breaks […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Children at a Refugee Camp
Wide eyes and swollen bellies, bruises on the soul: honeyed drips of birdsong. Kim M. Russell, 27th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 27: In a Station of the Metro Today Toni is hosting and she reminds us that there are only three more days to go […]
Rain
These curtains so accurately drawn in water on my windowpane remind me of briny tears, the way they ran in perfect vertical lines down the misty windscreen with the broken windscreen wiper that day on the storm tossed seafront. Even the urchin seagulls hugged the gritty beach. Who knew that distance could hurt so much? […]
Artistry
Extraordinary blue sky and Japanese artistry accentuate delicate petals against the outline of gnarled branches. They offer new life, calm before the storm of a spring breeze rips the blossom from the trees and fills the Arles air with sweet almond vapour. Kim M. Russell, 24th April 2019 My response to Poets United Midweek Motif […]
Fickle
April is a fickle month: she trips a teetering path through trees mad with ticking, tuneful birds, waking butterflies and bees. She dodges scattered earth and rocks behind a plough; sprinkles tender leaves and shoots with showers; spreads green foam through winter’s mud and, in lengthening evening hours, plays with last thrills of light. Kim […]
Unexpected Bells
‘The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of flowers.’ Matsuo Basho Silence drips into the sodden solitude of a deep druidic wood, goose-pimple chilled and tangle wild. All at once, the path Is broken by a sunny glade scattered with spikes of new nettle growth and, ringing through the leafy […]
Beautiful Prisoners
giant crack willows burst open with verdant joy slender prisoners on early release, riding the breath of an April breeze Kim M. Russell, 17th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 17: Somewhere in the midst of stirring April Sanaa is our host today and she brings us […]
April Morning
The morning’s dust-tongued with short-lived frost and seabirds moon-blown from the coast compete with bell-voiced wood pigeons. These early muffle-toed strolls are full of promise: spring winds roar in a leaf-foamed coppice and all the quiet moments in between, while hare-heeled boots touch damp earth with a kiss. No dark-vowelled dreams could have predicted this […]
Poetry as a Cry in the Dark
I call out to you in the dead of night. Dawn seems so far away. Enlightenment is shrouded in shadow. A moment of solitary despair. A moonbeam of ecstasy and words appear. The hoot and screech of owls pivot the changing light. Even a poet feels the weight of sleep heavy on her eyes, when […]
Cosmic Curiosity
How curious can rabbits be? Imagination and bunnies run riot beneath a canopy of stars, dodging the full bright of a dazzling moon to catch a distant twinkle before it crashes and burns. It’s not counting rabbits but constellations that send us to sleep, prehistoric slideshows projected on the inside of day-sore eyelids while we […]