Geese fly overhead, chain-stitched in a skein by the beat of wings. The gaggle alights on a lazy wind, flowing like water into the marshes, their harsh, hollow honks onomatopoeic echoes of winter past present future. Kim M. Russell, 26th July 2018 My poem for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night This Thursday I’m hosting […]
Category: Poems
Our Wilderness
Our garden is a green wilderness, an overgrown, tangled wildness, where cats stalk zoetic shadows and deer graze freely beneath willows; dragonflies dart between clumps of nettles, ladybirds wander and butterflies settle. No flowers are tamed or lined up in rows; it’s rampant with honeysuckle and rambling rose. Ancient quince, plum and apple tumble from […]
Sprig Spell
I build the spell with witch hazel, a woody frame to brighten gloomy days with spidery flowers in sunset sprays, sublime with spicy scent. I bind the spell with tendrils of evergreen ivy to ward off evil spirits, its heart-shaped leaves glossy with friendship and fidelity. I add some sprigs of rosemary to help you […]
Buoyant in Shadows
Splashed by shadows in the semi-cool of an empty swimming pool and feeling liquid-loose and buoyant from the sun’s electric current, I am floating in glimmers of past divers and swimmers; shouts and screams echo in daydreams of long ago summers at the lido. Kim M. Russell, 24th July 2018 My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie […]
Dreams of Fire
In the middle of a hot and breezeless night, I’m drenched in sweat and wrestling with the sheet snaked around my legs. I’m running from a heath fire, purple heather sizzles into burnt sienna and birds explode in showers of feathers, glowing and spitting like fanned embers. A sharp-winged dragon skims the hummocks, breathing flames […]
Anguish
Anguished cries of lapwings rise from deep in sedgy fields to sky; their tinny raspings bring to mind an anguish of a different kind: the mewling of a starving child; a young girl’s screams as she’s defiled; a mother’s keening of despair; a grandmother’s calm and care as she sings a soothing lullaby of winter […]
Caged Moon (a septet)
Willows, the anchors of life, felted with silvery grey, captured the moon and his wife in a basket canopy, where daddy longlegs rattle and candle flies do battle: at the end of a hot day. Kim M. Russell, 19th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Septets This Thursday, Frank Hubeny […]
Freed
I remember in 1986 a free concert on Clapham Common when Sade sang. Later, we raised our voices in a chorus to ‘Free Nelson Mandela’. Not long after, he took that long walk to freedom, with dignity and humility, shared his wisdom and showed how one man can unite many. He lived a long life, […]
Choking Nature
Humans record artistic impressions of patient Nature’s handiwork in a line of wind-tattered trees, a blanket hem along the skyline and curving sculptured hills, where skylarks rise from barley singing, and dissolve into the darkening welkin. Hills become shadows, the silence palpable over still-hot fields. And yet, in boroughs, towns and cities, greedy humans waste […]
Poetic Pruritis
A quadrille fidgets between fingers and beneath the skin, itches to be free with scratch of pen or fricative of key. A peculiar gnat-bite tingles with heat and buzzes with sounds and rhythm, has the poet wrangling with words in a vexation of stanzas. Kim M. Russell, 16th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets […]
writing in north norfolk 