Heels tapped on the pavement, cracked red patent flashed ’Stop!’ but she could only go despite the pinch on her little toe and the blisters rubbed raw by red shoe leather, lucky pumps borrowed from her sister. No shoes of her own, no trainers, boots or sandals to her name; everything sold to fund her […]
Category: Poems
A poem to sum up my feelings in this post.
Yearning for Mist
Now that lambing storms are done, showers alternate with sun, teasing early honeysuckle to stretch tendrils studded with gem-like buds in pear drop pinks and yellows. Pert and youthful, they raise a smile but I yearn for the mellow shades of autumn, the russet, the ochre, and the artistry of soft, dissolving, misty mornings, and […]
A Victorian Rose
I have an old, brown carved box, daily polished but never locked; the lid is broken and tied with a string but I treasure it above everything. In it I keep little squares of paper, mapped with grey mildew spatter, with hair inside, and a little picture with a saying from the holy scripture, which […]
Writing in Tongues
I trill in notes of birdsong I laugh in springs and streams I bark with dogs and muntjacs join owl and fox with screams sometimes I breathe in purrs sometimes I growl with rage when my pen clots with feral blood as it wrestles on the page but when it flows, it’s a crashing wave […]
Widdershins around the willow…
past a clump of daffodils, wild and self-willed, tangled in the tall grass where the bindweed grows. In corkscrew branches, a sunlit wood pigeon mutters a throaty warning for pilgrims to this place of Salix magic where Nature is budding green curtains of respectability to replace her tattered rags of dignity. Kim M. Russell, 3rd […]
Against Grief
It sits on my shoulder, craving attention; I try to ignore the surreptitious tears it draws from my soul’s well, and snot green bile so bitter it chokes. It puts up a fence around happy memories; I have to tear it down, time after time, posts and nails, tangled barbed wire. It rewrites stories; they’re […]
Scatter Words
The bend of the pen scatters unthinkable threads on a minatory page. After the thirst of an age of impasse, the erudite runaway bride writes her apologia underneath a poem about social dyslogia. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Wordle #190
Dear Sister
I’m sorry that our path divided and led in different ways; sad that you’ve forgotten the joy of childhood days; disappointed that my words could never melt the ice around your heart – they might have spelt a message you misunderstood. I’m sorry that a shared past is no promise of a future bond of […]
Secondhand
the second hand counts down on a second-hand clock it needs winding up the year has turned and every second counts Kim M. Russell, 2nd April 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo: Second Karin is hosting today’s prompt, which is ‘’second ‘in any of its forms, such as: second helpings, second […]
Paradox of Absolutes
How can we grasp reality without images and parables? We live by laws of nature and sing our hymns of praise; reach for heaven and find infinity and flux, children fishing for stars in oceans. Like stars we return to dust, guide others to join up the dots, to understand the paradox between belief and […]
