My grandmother always peeled an apple with grandfather’s penknife, careful, keeping it all in one piece. I watched it twirl and curl, with a whiff of sweetness, pinched between her fingers. She taught me a rhyme, that we said every time: apple peel, apple peel, tell me true, who am I going to get married […]
Category: Poems
Crafting Words of Earth and Water
By a river’s boulder-strewn gravelly bed,haiku unfurl in a meadow flecked with dandelions and cowslips. A sonnetfinds a foothold on a face of rock and in fine fissures ballads grow.We smell them in clods of earththat tumble crumbly from the plough;hear them in the songs of birds,trickle of streams and ocean’s roar;taste them in a […]
Dark Confessions Day
It’s #DarkConfessions Day and I’m celebrating the new anthology from @blackboughpoems with a photo of my copy and a snapshot of my poem, ‘We Only Come Out at Night’: Time spent isolatedwithin these four wallshas etched our skin with extra flaws
I am waiting
for the silvery shudder of sunshineto chime in a new day like church bells, to tempt me with glittering streamsand creeks threading seaward, to swells of waves like the ones in my dreams.Following this confusing map of the sea, I strain to hear dark-bellied geese creakand grumble along the sparkling tide-line, and long to paddle […]
Tread Gently
Tread gently in this skyscape,where a single cloud can weighheavy on the soul. Some escape;cumulonimbi the shade of sludgebluster grumpily across the skyuntil the sun sets, and blackbirds trill in hedges. An owl hoots a reply,to a distant barking dog.It is then that I see dead people, looming like vaporous fog,and left-over dust and gasestransform […]
My Garden Sanctuary
There is nothing neat about it;briars and nettles aboundso thick you use your feet to find some solid ground. It’s a wild jungle for cats and a leafy forest for deer, a green sanctuary. That’swhere I disappear, where poetry is the spin-drift of the green dream, the loose change in the pocket of time; the […]
The Leporine Waltz
Although hares may be mad throughout March, in the sun and the heat they continue to spar. As they waltz, the fur flies from their swift fisticuffs, unable to resist a last box round the ears. Ring the Hill, Old Fat Bum, Stag of the Stubble, all are mad hares and ready for trouble. Kim […]
Tir na Nog
We set up camp on the island, with fires and poteen to warmour skin and the cocklesof our hearts. We danced to the rhythm of the bodhran, sang along to guitars and fiddles,and the rise and fall of uillean pipes’ plaintive songs. The faeries all but laughed at our night-befores and morning-afters, lingering headache hangoversof […]
Out of Breath
Orion tightened his belt,just a few notches, adjusted weapons and pelt,eager to continue the chase,shooting stars through space.Out of breath and fading yellow.Leo roared, and Taurus bellowed,Capricorn pawed black holesin the atmosphere,ready to run and full of fear.The cosmic hunt was on,all at the mercy of Orion. Kim M. Russell, 13th May 2021 Image found […]
Indigo
They called her Indigo, not the name of a goddess, but Greek all the same, meaning Indian dye. She’s the turning of twilight, the tint of an iris that blooms in the garden or the depth of an eye. Her name gives her freedom to stride where she pleases in new jeans the blue of […]
