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
Category: Poems
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 […]
Within these Walls
I often misplace things within these walls: my keys, the telephone – it’s cordless – but never my glasses, which are always on my nose. I know I’ll find them again on a shelf crammed with favourite books or the table beside my armchair. In the middle of the night, when the only light is […]
Netsuke
Snug in the palm of my hand, fingers curled and caressing its smoothness, exploring miniature scales on back and fanned tail, tiny teeth in roar of mouth, the dust-filled creases of its head, flaming copper burnished with the faint scent of boxwood, my little finger fits the curve of its body, feels the kanji carved […]
The Elusiveness of Purple
It’s in the bloom on the skin of a plump plum poised to plop, the fruity sweetness of the drop of a blackberry’s inky stain, the smear of jam on a child’s face, and the smudge in the space between the rich red of sunset and the indigo of night. When the scent of plum […]
You can keep your clowns…
those unfunny comics with their distorted faces and noisy antics, brightly-coloured anarchists. No more animals in the ring! Uncage the wild and suffering bears and lions, the chimpanzees at infinite human tea parties. Give me the sparkles of lights in the darkness, knife-throw and fire-eatery, magic and mystery, sequins and grace, balance and flight of […]
writing in north norfolk 