Wintry Gusts

kogarashi ya mezashi ni nokoru umi-no iro Wintry gusts: on the sardine still lingers the ocean’s color.                                     Gaki (Tr.: Ueda) Clinging sweetly to the tongue the honeyed taste of summer.              Kim M. Russell, 7th May 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1658 Tan Renga Challenge Month May 2019 (5) Wintry gusts The haiku for today […]

Up Ended

I miss the freedom of childhood summers threading daisies searching for four-leaf clover turning an up- side down handstand against the wall dresses tucked in knickers laughing at each other’s frown that was an up- ended smile an omen it would soon be over Kim M. Russell, 6th May 2019 My response to dVerse Poets […]

Doll Games

I search the garden, behind every bush and tree trunk, in among the trellises of cascading beans and peas, all the places a precocious six-year-old would deem a magical queendom. She wasn’t in her bedroom or the den, not lurking in the ghostly shadows of the infinite corridor, so the garden is the only place […]

Back to the Garden

What will we do when satellites fall from space, when sky is sky and not an overwhelming channel choice? Besides, nature shows would have nothing to show us when most species are extinct. We’ll have to make do with whatever is left in the wilderness of our back garden. Offer me fruit and maybe we […]

Spring Cleaning

The old trellis is still standing, top-heavy with verdant honeysuckle leaves and studded with dark pink buds. Below the greenery, old woody branches tangle with dusty shadows, hunchbacked hollows of musty undergrowth.  Straining against my hands, secateurs crack and break brittle branches, their sharp echoes scattering birds and, deep inside the remains of an old […]

Beautiful Ugliness

banana-tree unworthy to look at beautiful ugliness                                       Yozakura shelter from the pouring rain welcome shadow in the sun                     Kim M. Russell, 2nd May 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1655 Tan Renga Challenge (2) Beautiful Ugliness This month we are creating short chained verses or […]