I like lists and ticking off items when complete, the regularity of paving stones beneath my feet, avoiding cracks and walking firmly in the squares, so as not to be eaten by predatory bears. I like to peg laundry neatly on a washing line, different coloured pegs for your clothes and mine. I like arranging […]
Category: Poems
A poem to sum up my feelings in this post.
Batty
Against the fading sunset light, small phantoms of the night circle and dip, bat-blind to the predicament of humankind. They are still free to gather and fly, flickering shadows in the sky, while we hunker in isolation, watching the planet’s devastation. Kim M. Russell, 14th April 2020 My response to earthweal weekly challenge: Connecting […]
Cloak of Invisibility
When the clock strikes midnight, will she vanish out of sight, a squashed pumpkin, a shattered glass slipper, a homeless, friendless Cinderella? Cloaked in the nightclub’s anonymity, dancing in the dark, caressed by strobe lights, she relished her invisibility, touched someone else’s damp skin, caught a glimpse of other people’s lives. But outside, on the […]
Thirteen Squared
Remember all the lies, belittling stares, derisive laughter, heat of scarlet shame, a wake that followed after preserved in ink, the aspic of the literati picking on the bones of every poet at the feast? You hoped they’d disappear, stuffed-shirted corpses, gilt with attitude and privilege, but no, their breath still lingers, the cloying scent […]
Between the Shelves
She wrote him a ballad between the Classics and the Poetry shelves in the public library, inhaling papery pheromones. She spotted his shadowy figure between periodicals and autobiography, held her breath to stop the erratic timpani of her heart and the blood-red symphony surging in her ears. The poem slipped from her sweaty fingers, drifted […]
Early Rising
It’s four o’clock and it’s still dark outside, but blackbird chorus glimmers gently through the curtains gap. The window’s open wide and I can smell the chlorophyll, the dew, the dreamlike whiff of rain-soaked earth, and you asleep beside me, unaware of dawn: late risers hold morn’s moody light in scorn. Kim M. Russell, 9th […]
No Fallacy
Below brisk grey skies, the landscape folded in on itself, exhausted from the iron rod of a long dark winter. One April morning, I awoke to the whisper and whistle of spring: tentative promises opened in snowdrops bowing and pearled with dewdrops, fanfared in sunshine and a blaze of blossom, intent on sparkling and banishing […]
at the water’s edge
a boy crouched at the water’s edge his fingers felt the waves the pull of the current tangle of chickweed wash of passing swan tickle of trout inhaling scents of far-off places breathing them out he watched his toy boat skip ripples on the breeze blow under willows where ducks gather water voles bask in […]
Corona
It came in the guise of a gaseous envelope in the sky of sun and other stars. No eclipse this time – just a pearly glow around the muted disc of moon. Chinese New Year celebrations were cancelled and Italy’s strict lockdown won’t be lifted soon. How appropriate that this is the year of the […]
Twisted around her wrist…
a bracelet of cowslips and oxeyes, meadow flowers of summers long gone. Her refusal to add pimpernels, rubies among silver and gold, surprised me. But she was drawn with childish glee to sunny dandelions and buttercups that cast a buttery glow under her chin. So many seasons of bracelets twist around the couplet of our […]
writing in north norfolk 