Category: Poems

November Monday

Monday is the colour of sky,the first day of the weekas fresh as washing on a line. This November Monday,there’s a musty yellow scent,an ochre aroma of decay, like a pumpkin or a melon,overripe and mushy mellow,not citrus-sharp like lemons. This Monday’s weatheris washed into a muddy green,sun and wind and rain together, mixed up […]

November Burning

Leaf-flame disappears from trees,doused into a sodden massbeneath my boot-clad feet,kicked until the limp leaves liftand fall – again. Drizzle develops into steady rain,but neighbours are intent on rakingand burning. Pungent billowspermeate lank laundryon the washing line. Boots off, safe and dry indoors,the first fire of the season roars,releasing smoky memoriesof the November mornwhen she […]

Greening the Mind

Word-bound, I watch the coming winterhaunt the garden, eager to paint it silver. I count the rags of blue sky overhead,topped with grumbling thunderheads, savour the smell of rich black earth, the gleamof gold and lemon, not quite drowning out the green. Trees drip with limpid air this green-gold morninglike words from my poetic pen, […]

Autumn’s Folly

She paints the landscape red and gold,cossets fruit, more than we can hold, silvers webs and tinkers with the lightonly to plunge us into wintry night. Her leafy folly flutters and decays,the fruits of her labour last but days, winter haunts her with ghostly mistand bids her goodbye with an icy kiss. Kim M. Russell, […]

A Walk in the Cemetery by Moonlight

A celebration before winter darkness,fingering crumbled earth with brightness, moonlight creeps through autumn turbulenceto gild gravestones hunkered in silence. Pale breath of lunar light tongues dustamong tattered leaves now turned to rust and scattered on well-trodden stones,traces epitaphs and seeks out bones, meagre offerings for a midnight repastbefore the cold season’s hollow fast.    Something […]

Prayers of Bone

Beware this Halloweenand the days in between, when knuckles crackbehind the back, of the flesh-eating ghoulthat sips your soul, carves telling stonesfrom finger bones, Our Fathers and Hail Marysstrung on calcified rosaries. Fingers that once folded in prayer,this Halloween beware! Kim M. Russell, 21st October 2020 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings […]

Bursting

Earth has birthed an abundance of fruit:tawny acorn knots rain hard from oak trees;hollies burn brightly with a blood-red flame;magenta spindles split open orange hearts.A young boy kicks spiky shells with his boot,searching for chestnuts in a sea of sunset leaves –it’s conker time, and children play the game,knocking hardened seeds until they burst apart. […]