there is the shade of the willow tree the stone gnome sleeping peacefully the deer that chew its healing leaves the green light shifting in a gentle breeze the piebald magpie with its chatter about things that do not really matter the cat that climbs its crooked branches the scraps of sun in rays and […]
Category: Poems
A Little Love Song
You embrace us in your hills and pastures, and suckle us from softly gleaming rivers. You nurture us with fruit, plant and grain, and show us how to grow them all again. You teach us how to flourish together like trees in forests and birds of a feather. And what do we give you in […]
Peaceful Protest
Today, I woke to daisies, their childish sunny faces embroidered in the buzz cut of yesterday’s mown grass. Escaping from the tendrils of untamed honeysuckle, an anarchy of roses, peaceful and perfumed, dew-washed and breeze- blown, outside a writer’s room. Nature bears no banners scrawled with hateful phrases, she demonstrates her power with branch, thorn […]
Broken
van Gogh wrote: ‘The conscience is a man’s compass.’ Our compass broke, we have no common sense or sentience, and Earth is barely turning – into a bad joke. We harvest palm oil and rainforests choke, oceans on this so-called blue planet are drowning in a mass of plastic, and fur-coated men grin as polar […]
Fieldwork – a new anthology
A poem of mine has been included in a new anthology of East Anglian nature writing, which is now available to pre-order from the UEA Publishing Project. https://www.ueapublishingproject.com/product-page/field-work
Tingle
Ice-cold loneliness numbed her body and soul, shielded her heart, with starry snowflakes. With her eyes the colour of slush after snow, embrangled in winter’s undertow, her personal winter drifted into spring, hoar frost still sparkled on everything like a silver Midas touch, until she found a crow, ebony black, stiff on the ground. She […]
Alice’s Grave
Marked only by a rusted cross of curlicues among rows of lichen-covered stones, your final resting place has churchyard hues, this peaceful housing of your crumbled bones. I know your name, Alice, when you were born and the date of your last breath. Not a trace of family, no husband or child left to mourn. […]
No More Red
Although in our hearts and souls a fire has taken hold, crimson only burns up the canvas, fuels and lights the war, sticky as blood, congealing the soil and nothing nourishing will grow. The verdure of peace is a welcome balm, it cools the heat and keeps us calm. Kim M. Russell, 9th June 2020 […]
Annus Horribilis
We’re only halfway through this year of crises that has stolen so many memories, sprayed terror like graffiti in our cities, and ravaged lives like blossom from spring trees. We cling to a glass cliff as our world falls apart, stunned by the contempt of presidential farts, the hatred and violence that’s breaking our hearts. […]
Isolation
After so many days wrapped in an unmanageable weave of fear, huddled under the tenebrous umbrella of isolation, a small glint of cheer had broken through the mass of cloud, caused a blackbird to spill golden droplets of notes, buoyant poems of liberty. But once again, a new terror stamps and punches its way across […]
writing in north norfolk 