By the light of a quince-bright moon a pair of snowy owls flew low and silent, newly arrived from frost-bound wastes, feathers invisible against a silver birch, hungry for a taste of fresh mice and voles. In an ancient ash, a tawny owl, swivelled its head, blinked its eyes and hooted long and low, a […]
Category: Poems
She is bold
and she is gold a yellow globe of chrysanthemum joyful and optimistic unfurling in the sun in her heart the warmth of summer rustling gently in the breeze among burnished falling leaves ready to mourn on the old year’s tomb. Kim M. Russell, 7th October 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: What’s […]
Alien
This October I am happy that another of my poems has been included in Volume 5, Chapter 12 of the Visual Verse Anthology. You can find it on page 22 or you can follow the link to ‘Alien‘.
Locked
Padlocked by passion, she worshipped no more relics, gathered no hair, brewed no potions, no more rituals or spells, no wax figures, no toads stuck with thorns – just a love lock carved with initials, a symbol of fidelity and, thrown into the depths of the river, the key: heavy metal to weigh down hopeless […]
Winter Souvenirs
below ever-changing blues ruffled by winds’ blow the ebb and flow of translucent water embraces islets rocks and pebbles piled by waves traces of rage and storm winter-borne Kim M. Russell, 6th October 2018 My response to Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo Thursday photo prompt: Faraway
Scrimshaw
is the sound of wave washing whale spurt of spout from blowhole mournful moan of humpback’s tune whaler’s ahoy and thud of harpoon a deconstructed tooth or bone hacked and sawn, cut and honed when a lull of inactivity gave rise to creativity a reminder of giants of the sea human beings’ waste and cruelty […]
Washing Day
I can still smell soap bubbles in the scullery, steamy clean and floating through my early years; my grandmother’s hands red and hot, tea-towels boiling in the biggest pot as I turned the handle of the wringer, reminded always to ‘Mind your finger!’ I remember sitting on the back step while she raised the line […]
Adrift
It was the season of drifting scents, ice on the windscreen, pine needles on the wind. Outside, Christmas roses still clung to thorny stems and I longed for secateurs to deadhead delicate corpses but could not bear to touch petals the colour of bruised skin. Instead I opened a window to cut the cloying breath […]
Poets Curve
We are curving, avoiding life’s black holes, skipping star-encrusted puddles, bending light through space and time, taming swirls of cosmic inky rhyme, producing poetry of gravity, predicting relativity. Kim M. Russell, 30th September 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Physics with Björn: Gravity and space-time curvature Björn is back to inspire us […]
A Secret Guest
Hidden in plain sight, trapped in the linseed scent, the musk of old art and paint, behind the green and ochre of the Olive Trees for over a century, it forfeited the freedom of life en plein air. Vincent didn’t notice his secret guest, having picked off “a good hundred flies and more”. The grasshopper […]
writing in north norfolk 