We are not all white starsthat fell from the sky. Some of us are amber and lignite,we never sparkle or ignite. We are beige and tawny yellow,ochre, black and brown. We are the colours of desert,sun-burnt grass and earth. I am a lion proud and wild,Mother Nature’s regal child. Kim M. Russell, 8th February 2021 […]
Category: Poems
Nell’s Legacy
Rain spits at the closed windowdripping with condensationand I’m listening a play on the radio,following in Nell’s footsteps. The iron steams. Clothes, rescuedfrom the line when the first cloudcracked, are scented with raindrops,creased and pleading to be smooth. Pressing fabric between iron and board,I breathe in warm memories, slipdown the years into a laundry-scented embrace,catch […]
Reheating a Cold War
Red geraniums rust in September rain and sparrows splash in puddles again. In summer’s hinterland, something is stirring leaves already yellow, their weariness showing, tattered and brittle, counting years with their falling. But still trees find safety in numbers, flourishing in ancient copses, forests and woods, growing together for the common good while men train […]
Candlemas Vow
In the moody half-lightof the Imbolc landscapebetween birch, ash and oak,there’s an unspoken oath. Brassy hazel catkins shimmer,lemony lamb’s tail buds glimmer,and there’s a gleam in Candlemasbells’ nodding waxen flowers. Everywhere, for the first timethis year, is the vow that temperatures will climband imbue everythingwith the welcome scent of spring. Kim M. Russell, 1st February […]
Opening Time
It’s raining old women and sticks; the lights are on, but the pub’s still closed. They’re gasping for pints and packets of crisps, squeezed tight together under the awning, from which fat globules of water drip, trickle off ends of unkempt hair and find their way past grimy collars. Between the telephone box and bike […]
If
there hadn’t been hesitant sleetthat eventually turned to snowheaped like hills on the empty street, it might not have fluttered silently,like luminescent moths outsidethe window, a continued quietude when the flakes ceased gentlyfalling, that might not have been brokenby the boisterous warble of a robin. Kim M. Russell, 27th January 2021 My response to Poets […]
Sad Song
“The clear vowels rise like balloons” S.Plath ~ Morning Song A favourite song floats into the mind on a passing whimsical wind, prompted by a blackbird’s incidental trill or the postman’s whistle, and I am there again, mouth wide open, lungs bursting with the thrill, in a crowd of hearts beating to the same rhythm […]
Holme
It sounds like home. It’s a morning walk on a Norfolk beach,wind strewing salty seaweedlike hair on a northerly breeze. The flatness hid the traces. It was a sea henge with an upturned oak stumpat the centre of a Bronze Age ring of trunks:fifty-five split and ancient hearts of oak. And hearts were split. Some […]
A Cup of Winter Tea
Steaming cup in hand, I shiver outdoorsas the moon freezesin a cloud of mist and sequin starsnot even northern breezescan penetrate the chill from Earth to MarsI know that under the snowplants sprout and bulbs are ready to unfoldand the tea I made half an hour agois stone cold Kim M. Russell, 20th January 2021 […]
Joining the Dots
Like a child with an activity book, I join up the dots, spy with my little eye pictures in earth and sky, from horizon to horizon: the shapes of flocks of birds, clouds and the occasional rainbow – which must be coloured in. We are joined by bone […]
writing in north norfolk 