She is surrounded by patchwork fields as vivid as an artist’s impression: here and there a stone church or umber farmhouse scattered across her apron stained with hues of olive, grape, tomato, and scented with rosemary, basil, oregano, zesty lemons and aromatic espresso. She stretches her limbs along the Arno, terracotta roofs reflecting heat and […]
Category: Poems
Mind Map of a Forgotten Coast
Our coastal skin shrank as knowledge grew; why have we forgotten paths and dunes devoured by an increasingly hungry sea? Never sated, the leviathan lingers on the shore until its rumbling belly sends it back for more. Ancient rock has turned to crumbling cliffs and sand. There are no maps to fathom what lies beneath, […]
Served from the Heart (revisited)
l u r […]
A Moment
I took a real moment, not a virtual corona one, to step out into the garden, under cover of the darkest night. White noise and rustle of leaves – the only human sound was the distant hum of tyre on tarmac, a delivery truck perhaps. It was quiet and so dark I could not see […]
Heavy Suitcase
They took away my suitcase. There wasn’t much in it: a book to read, clean underwear, a nice dress for visiting hours (no one ever comes) and church on Sundays, moisturising cream for my hands and face. I didn’t think I’d be here long. Now I need to fill it with the weight of nightmare […]
Tesselated
honeycomb hexagons too narrow for fingers but just right for bees conjuring honey from pollen tidy and tessellated sticky-sweet Kim M. Russell, 24th April 2020 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo Day 24 Play it Again in April 2020: Wild Woman’s Natural Wonders On Wednesday 24th April, 2019, Sherry inspired us with […]
A Love Story (for bewildered girls)
After tomorrow, Saturday will unfurl in a gathering light: the beginning of the world in the middle of the night. There are faces in the water inside my head. I collect postcards from no man’s land that no one’s ever read. That’s how I live now, all alone in a house of sand and fog. […]
Rediscovering the Night
Lying smug and snug in the arms of the countryside, I can’t recall the sound of the city’s background song, but hope, in this shutdown pandemic, that worldwide respect spreads like galaxies of stars for the long- forgotten night noises: the whirring wings of geese returning and the owls’ reviewing the day in the trees. […]
Hitchhikers on the Wind
It starts with an ephemeral puff of delicate seed-heads in a child’s hand, waiting for the wind, hitchhikers free to take sunshine wherever they land. A dandelion may start life as a fragile seed, a tickle in a downy clock a drifter on a breeze, but it can crumble paving stones and rock and, before […]
My Feline Muse
I did not choose my muse, the god Bastet owned me; I fell for the sunrise in her eyes, her tamed ferocity, soft fur, and her full throttle purr. She favours my chest and hip as the spots on which she sleeps, riding the waves of dreams with me, kneading us into shape, a comforting […]
writing in north norfolk 