This room is quiet.I’m alone in the house –except for a catasleep under the bed upstairs.White noise pervades,maybe it’s tinnitus, but it’s calming,like crickets in summer-baked grass.The carpet I vacuumed yesterdayhas the coloured of wheat,it’s soft underfoot –until I wander onto the tiled floorof the kitchen, hard and cool.The fridge is humming the same old […]
Secrets
The last raindrops drip from the leaves with a slowing rhythm, so Maude closes and shakes her umbrella, and continues along the brick-weave path. Her father designed many gardens before he was diagnosed with dementia and eventually disappeared from her life, and she only recently discovered the key to the ornate gate to this garden, […]
Splendour
Throughout summer,there are countless shadesof green and shapesof leaves, textures of bark.Some grow tall, while others revelin their stunted hunchbacks,sculpted by weather. While scrawny sunflowerscomplain about their lastdance with the sun,trees smile and limber upfor the golden splendourstored in their roots,their hidden autumn treasure. Kim M. Russell, 14th August 2025 This Thursday at the dVerse […]
A Clattering in the Garden
There are jackdaws in the gardenplaying hide-and-seekin the willow and the birch congregatingjabberingflying jet-black jazz handsflappingsigning communicating the messagethat autumn is already knockingon the year’s door warning us that leavesand acorns willfall once more Kim M. Russell, 11th August 2025 It’s Monday and at the dVerse Poets Pub we are writing quadrilles, poems of exactly […]
On the Way to School
trailing shadows we hold each other’s handsgripping our bags listening for the bellevery daywe walk to school we walk to schoolevery daylistening for the bell gripping our bagswe hold each other’s hands trailing shadows Kim M. Russell, 7th August 2025 This Thursday is the day for Meeting the Bar at the dVerse Poets Pub; today […]
Not Lost
We’re not lost in the woods,just walkingamong trunks and tortuous branches,where the trees’ chill breath gentlesyoung buds, leaf mulch and bark. We are surroundedby ancient guardiansand greening lungs of the earth. Pale light streamsthrough leafless canopyso dense there is no night or day,only twilight, our waylit by bright white starsof wood anemones,playing hide and seek between […]
Reflections on Silver
I remember, at the age of seven or eight, copying sentences and sayings, chosen by our teacher, from a chalkboard in neat italic, writing in blue ink with an italic pen. I can remember quite a few of them, but the one that stands out in my mind is: “Speech is silver, silence is golden.” […]
The Uncertainty of the Poet
She tries to see beyondthe contours of the marble torso, the pile of over-ripe bananasand the shadows of the building, to the boats by the harbour wall,the darkening sky and the coming storm. But her thoughts returnto sunshine and shadow, the dimple in the statue’s backsideand the bruised yellow of fruit about to rotin the […]
Fishing the Moon
She is puckered up like a strange kissin the mourning jet of midnight’s pond. She quivers her fins, a shimmering silver moonfishin a Piscean circle, meeting herself mirrored among ripples, before she sinks like a stonefishinto sad little couplets of morning. Kim M. Russell, 28th July 2025 It’s Monday and time for us to write […]
On the Anniversary of Her Death
Like sky maps sketched in the bird brainsof flocks and vees of geesethat fly overhead, the contours and plainsof my late mother’s faceare dyed deep in my genes, a treasured stainthat cannot be erased.Outside, frost stiffens and silvers remainsof leaves. Again, I saygoodbye. Kim M. Russell, 24th July 2025 It’s Thursday and time to meet […]
writing in north norfolk 