The young man’s hands were slender, quick and strong, composing sonnets to his unknown muse, creating worlds in drama and in song to challenge the emotions and amuse. The busy writer’s hands were stained with ink and words. His skin was cracked and raw with rhyme. The scratching of the pen spurred him to think […]
Category: Poems
Selma the Cryptic Cryptid
A cryptic cryptid, Selma’s obscured in the icy depths of Lake Seljord through the long, dark Norwegian winters. She surfaces during hot, quiet summers, playing hide and seek in the fjords, searching for love with an elusive mate, another ferocious monster of the lake. Kim M. Russell, 17th January 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden […]
Tightropes and Stilts Revisited
The long and precarious tightrope walk stopped when I left the big top of teaching. Now I walk on creative stilts, sometimes teetering, sometimes tumbling into a safety net of words and rhyme. I don’t worry because I have the time. Kim M. Russell, 17th January 2019 My response to Poets United Midweek Motif ~ […]
A Need to Know Basis
You need to know, I have a fragile muse fashioned from Venetian glass, blown out and close to shattering. Despite that, we climb aboard a gondola and enter the shadow of the Bridge of Sighs, sighing and shivering from the sudden chill. But Venice has its own poetry. The city knows which form to use […]
A Hollow Season
Oh, season of hollow darkness and silence! When the blackbird sings before Christmas, she will cry before Candlemas, is how the saying goes; so I forgive the muted blackbird and thank the thrush for singing sweet promises of spring despite threats of frost and snow. Kim M. Russell, 12th January 2019 My response to Imaginary […]
Words and Feet
We welcomed them eighty years ago from the shadows of the night of broken glass to the streets of Britain and beyond, child refugees, hungry and scared, in need of homes. History should not be allowed to repeat itself; it’s our turn to act, to learn from the past and protect children fleeing conflict and […]
On the back of the bathroom door…
hangs the cosiest cardigan, the one I hug to me in the early morning; that embraces me while brewing the first cup of tea; that warms me as I write a chilly January poem; the one that shields me from the sneaky draught that evades the excluder and, unwarmed by the log burner, wraps itself […]
Renewal
In a bright display, dawn bursts and colour- washes the sky with a still life of hot pink, purple and gold. Aurora ameliorates and burnishes the old in a bleak, wintry landscape with silhouetted lucidity and an artist’s eye. Kim M. Russell, 4th January 2019 My response to Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo Thursday photo prompt: […]
Morning Inspiration
I get up early while you’re still asleep; avoid the cats while creeping down the stairs, try not to wake you with my leaden feet, and stumble over work boots into chairs. The floor is cold, and so’s the toilet seat, the sink is laced with toothpaste and stray hairs. The cat tray smells and […]
Bread-Making in Winter
For months frayed foliage has covered earth, the agèd year is faded to sepia shades and now it turns again to white and grey with early dusk as winter draws its breath. The frigid bite of January’s mellowed, outdone by the aroma, as it lingers, of yeast and flour wafting from your fingers, familiar scent […]
writing in north norfolk 