In the middle of a hot and breezeless night, I’m drenched in sweat and wrestling with the sheet snaked around my legs. I’m running from a heath fire, purple heather sizzles into burnt sienna and birds explode in showers of feathers, glowing and spitting like fanned embers. A sharp-winged dragon skims the hummocks, breathing flames […]
Category: Poems
Anguish
Anguished cries of lapwings rise from deep in sedgy fields to sky; their tinny raspings bring to mind an anguish of a different kind: the mewling of a starving child; a young girl’s screams as she’s defiled; a mother’s keening of despair; a grandmother’s calm and care as she sings a soothing lullaby of winter […]
Caged Moon (a septet)
Willows, the anchors of life, felted with silvery grey, captured the moon and his wife in a basket canopy, where daddy longlegs rattle and candle flies do battle: at the end of a hot day. Kim M. Russell, 19th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Septets This Thursday, Frank Hubeny […]
Freed
I remember in 1986 a free concert on Clapham Common when Sade sang. Later, we raised our voices in a chorus to ‘Free Nelson Mandela’. Not long after, he took that long walk to freedom, with dignity and humility, shared his wisdom and showed how one man can unite many. He lived a long life, […]
Choking Nature
Humans record artistic impressions of patient Nature’s handiwork in a line of wind-tattered trees, a blanket hem along the skyline and curving sculptured hills, where skylarks rise from barley singing, and dissolve into the darkening welkin. Hills become shadows, the silence palpable over still-hot fields. And yet, in boroughs, towns and cities, greedy humans waste […]
Poetic Pruritis
A quadrille fidgets between fingers and beneath the skin, itches to be free with scratch of pen or fricative of key. A peculiar gnat-bite tingles with heat and buzzes with sounds and rhythm, has the poet wrangling with words in a vexation of stanzas. Kim M. Russell, 16th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Fifty Five
My fifty-fifth long ago disappeared In the rear-view mirror. Another birthday looms mirrorless – unless I can find a looking-glass that zooms in and out, magnifies my cuckoo soul, the one with the glow, gorgeous and free of blemishes. Old age crosses the road slowly, turning to smile knowingly, making me wait at life’s crossing. […]
Muted Blackbird
Quintessence of fluting blackbird’s gone; at sunrise, golden-beaked jet-black throats no longer sing, though summer’s in full swing. Kim M. Russell, 15th July 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Fussy Little Forms: Tricube – also linked to Poets United Poetry Pantry Marian is back in the Garden this weekend with Fussy Little […]
Harbinger
A glimmer of sky is reflected in its eye, echoing with the raw and ragged corvine caw, reminding us of misty dawns, morning breath of autumn yawns and branches bristling with jet feathers as the harbingers of winter flock together. Kim M. Russell, 12th July 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Artistic […]
Summer in Metropolis
The metropolis blooms in wavy heat among paving stones, glass and concrete sprouting with brightly coloured leisure-wear, and parks are littered with deckchairs, where office workers burn like toast as they unfold on the grass to roast. Ties are discarded in the office, water fountains and coolers promise a sparkle in after- noon aridity for […]
writing in north norfolk 