“The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,everything it lost and found again, and everyoneit loved, the heart cannot forget.” from ‘What the Heart Cannot Forget’ by Joyce Sutphen Memories of your gentle faceare sketchedon my heart,like paths across the landscape. The shape of your lipsis etchedinto my genealogy. The frost of that morning […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Wordstone
I’m not a light-footed scampereron windswept beaches, however I’m like a ruddy turnstone, my ageingskin freckled and pebbled, turning words like stones and discoveringthe nourishment that I’m seeking: words and phrases, deep as the sea;a pile of eureka poems to satisfy me. Kim M. Russell, 7th January 2024 Ruddy turnstone, photographed by Michael Sammut For […]
Blue Period
I was a quiet, sensitive teenager, who felt songs deeply, like tattoos. I’d never been to sea or travelled abroad, and longed to sail away. But I let someone underneath my skin, where there was an empty space to fill. That was where I went wrong, trusting someone who didn’t have my best interests at […]
Nature’s Not So Well Kept Secret
Behind brief, flickering shadows,the invisible bones of nature glow. Autumn sun burnishes leaves,like gun smoke their incense breathes. For centuries men have used their mindsto construct walls of different kinds to repel enemies and protecttheir property, kin and the rich select. But nature has a single secret,one she’s never very well kept: winter threatens humans […]
Lady with a Parrot
Her life is mirrored in the bird:grey with a touch of crimsonin the parrot’s crest and feather tips,and her unsmiling lips. Red’s lucky for some,but she is a captive,tamed and longing to flybeyond blue curtains to sky and leaves, green as the bowl,from which she sips her tea,and green as her envyof the parrot’s wings. […]
Self Portrait with Clouds
I’d heard the voice but never seen its owner,loved the songs but never seen her face,but then I found her self-portrait on a coverwith the words; inside the music and her voice. It was the first time I’d ever seen a portraitor even a painting on a record sleeve;now there was a blonde woman’s blue-eyed […]
Take Three Words
Drizzly It’s one of those days when the distinctscent of petrichor permeates the day; it sneaks through open windows and leavesan invisible trail like snot on a child’s sleeve, or the track of a single plump raindropas it trickles down the window pane. Wipes As a child, I loved to watch the window cleanerwhen he […]
In a Hotel Lobby
She waits, her legs tucked in demurely,an open book in her hands,but she doesn’t see the words; one eyeis on reception, its counterpolished and bee-wax-scented. Surelyhe isn’t late? The couple on the otherside of the late-night hotel lobbylook married; he stands,coat draped over arm while his seated wifetries to catch his eye. And then the […]
Catching the Heart off Guard
There was a time whenI knew nothing about life on thecoast: how the shore is buffeted by wind;waves spray salty brine above dunes; andseals follow you, riding thewaves glittering in morning light. Now I know the sound of gulls, they arethe music of the sea, laughing at humans workingon boats. Gulls know the beauty of […]
A Darkling Tableau
Where once grasses buzzedwith jazz of cricketsand loud grasshoppers,cornfields have been razedto stubble, and strawploughed in umber earth. Herons stalk soddenfields, through soggy standsof russet bracken,on towards winter,in ancient rhythm,still pulsing with life. It’s the yawn of time,when the hearth’s tonguesets culture on fire,to glow through the blackdome of night untilthe coming of spring. Winter’s […]
writing in north norfolk 