These first cool mornings are redolent with fallen apples’ sweet, rotten scent and dry grass littered with foliage. Flowers fade; leaves turn from green to brown with nothing in between, and crops gave up weeks ago. But this is not autumn. Nature’s grabbing what she can, counting the souls of every aliferous foliole before abandoning […]
Category: Poems
Season of Choice
‘No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely’ – Vincent van Gogh Spring is always fresh and new with gentleness of pastel hues so delicate, tender, newly born on a gentle, breezy, sunny morn. But autumn still retains the blue of summer skies, […]
Tingle
In this stifling heat I conjure up the redolence of forest snow, the ice-trapped secrets of moss and fern, and the tingling overtone of pine – how I long to bottle it, make it mine. Kim M. Russell, 23rd August 2022 For this week’s Tuesday Poetics our guest host is Jo, also known as Worms, […]
Lion Tongue
I trail scorch marks in my wake as I breach each firebreak. My voracious carnassials devour every blade of grass and flower, the leaves on every shrub and tree. Once I charge, there’s no stopping me. But when you feel the biting chill of winter coming over the hill, you embrace my crackle and roar; […]
Ghostly Bedfellows
I’m so pleased that I was long-listed in the Globe Soup June micro fiction competition, which had the theme of ‘cats’ and accepted fiction, non-fiction prose and poetry with a word count of up to 100 words. Ghostly Bedfellows In the grey shadows of predawn, I’m woken by companions of the past and the present, […]
Blue Period
As in Pablo Picasso’s depressive art, the long path through a winter dark with anguish, despair and frailty is a spectrum of indigo melancholy: from blue-tinged ice, cobalt and navy to the hopefulness of aquamarine, it echoes our blind faith in the seasons. And then, suddenly, pieces of sky drop to earth in hosts of […]
Persistence of Vision (a cento)
The future was a beautiful place, once. I held you that June morning when you opened your eyes; we were seeing one another after seasons of darkness. Like some watcher of the skies. I consider how my light is spent, look into my glass and view my wasting skin; vision may be just a part […]
Trapeze of Life
Being human is a circus trick, a t i g h t r o p e w a l k between now and then, a flourish, and back again. juggling swords, eating fiery words, the highs and lows of the flying trapeze, the bearded lady’s s l o w s t r I p t […]
Like a Duck
Life is a garrulous river glinting through wisps of cloud. A glimpse of life through cloud and I feel like a duck treading water, scattering sparkles on the water like van Gogh’s canvas of glowing stars. I swim against the tide of stars, drag my heavy body to a grassy bank and relish the respite […]
Spring in Speech Marks
My life has been steeped in chromaticity, punctuated by leaves and buds, but me, I’m still curled up like an apostrophe suspended between seasons. In the green garden, pointillistic blue flowers bloom as a cloud of full stops, and you surprise me like an exclamation mark, true to your pink gregariousness, bringing light and heat […]