I tread water, in time,in my sea of consciousness,adrift in space, untilmy mermaid legs are grippedby cramps. Salt water spillsas I climb a rock to restand set myself the taskof repairing torn netsof inspiration and castthem to the waves.Some days, words slipthrough my head like silverminnows. Other days, I seemto catch a whole ocean. Kim […]
In My Grief A Crab
Grief is a tangled mess,a knot of ghosts and memories,its sting is in life’s unevents:a hermit crab without a shellmoving in to plastic and metaltrash; a honey bee poisoned by pesticide;a wildflower wilting in heat by a roadside. Kim M. Russell, 8th July 2024 Image by Mark Harpur on Unsplash It’s the second Monday in […]
Fragments of Woodland
I remember the momentwe entered the woods:boots imprinted soil, releasing the scent of bark. I remember how the shadowsand undergrowth embraced us.The chill traced goose bumpson our skin as we brushed past rusty ferns and sodden grass,tangled in branches, kissedby leaves and brushed by fungus,and acres of trees exhaled into fragments of sky and cloud,a […]
The Known and the Unknown
I don’t play video games. My husband does and, sometimes, I watch, suspended in my space,while he controls the action in his. In Silent Hill, we shared the eerie corridors, the abandoned fairground,the empty streets of a ghost town. We searched with the protagonistfor his missing daughter, avoidedor killed zombies that roamed,and were terrified when […]
A Train Ride Home
I look back on my life,trying to find the splicebetween child and adult,and find iton a train ride home. I’m not long off the Oostende ferry,all set for a week in London;I have a poem half-done,balanced on my knees. From the open window, a sharp breezethreatens to blow it away;I tuck my notebook under my […]
Longest Days
I have been looking forward to lighter nights all winter; instead of closing the curtains against the dark at four o’clock I can leave them open until ten. Birds feel the same way and continue to sing until late, lending the day a cheerful ending. Although the sun has neglected to put its hat on […]
My Precious
High in the dark dome, you,my late-flowering moon, becomea fully bloomed pearl, tattooedwith gossamer veins. Below,grey and white houses tumbledown the valley, spangledfor a moment by the light, untilyou are hidden by cloud,wrapped in crushed velvet.Our monthly tryst is over now;I watch you sink, heavy and slowoutside my lonely window.Come back soon,my precious moon. Kim […]
On Opening a Book
earthy musty vanilla redolenceerupts into comforting scentsof paper inky words dreams stories poetry from past agespaper that was born in reamscut neatly into pages book weight in happy handshas a balance of coverand leaves caressed by fingers pristine dog-eared annotated abusedthe satisfying sussurus as they turnand the individual paper colour white yellowed crackling edgescrisp fresh […]
Night Shade
It’s past one when I find her. I’ve been to midnight mass and, by the time the priest wished everyone a merry Christmas, it had started to snow. I nip out the back to collect my cardboard box and sleeping bag from behind one of the new gravestones, and that’s when I see her, pale […]
I Want to Play
Backlit,by counterpointsof sunlight, harmonyof shadows, fingers merge with blackand white, releasemajor chords redand green, mournful minorsgrey and blue shifting between darkminus and lightof plus, untila sunbeam, dotted withmotes of a melody, breaks through.I play. Kim M Russell, 1st June 2024 Image by Michael Effendy on Unsplash Reworked from an old poem from 2019, a poems […]
writing in north norfolk 