Although trees are still mostly green, the year is finally turning. Autumn is here: hedges are crimson with berries; leaves are yellowing, and the year is fading to brown. In the air, there is already a taste of frost. I find myself willing leaves to change colour and fall, so that I can crunch them […]
Michaelmas Daisies
When all wildlife is depletedand we are left to scrabbleamong limy rocks and burnt-outshrubs and copses, and rowthe marshland for sustenance,we may be rewardedwith a universe of daisiesto remind us of the past:the gathering of carrotsand merrymaking,all before facingthe death of the old year,the passing of the old life,the cold ash of isolation. Kim M. […]
Glossolalia
Listen to the storm! It speaks in tonguesthrough a mouthful of leaves and windfallcores, a drunken lilt in its gale of a song. Listen to the storm! The tutting rainis gossiping through the windowpanein a language you will never tame. Listen to the storm! In the lingering draughtdown the chimney, from the windowsilland under the […]
Figures in a Landscape
Many thanks to The Ekphrastic Review for including my poem in their latest Ekphrastic Writing Responses to a picture by Bertram Brooker. It’s called ‘Figures in a Landscape’ and it’s the fifth one down. I highly recommend reading all the responses, which are of a high standard, and I’m in excellent company with Merril Smith […]
A Robin’s Protest
After lively protesting all summer long,at first ablaze and full of umbrage,morning is broken by a different song. The melody falls with the foliage,in falling becomes more sorrowfulto see Earth going into freefall: leaves, acorns, a robin’s canticle. Kim M. Russell, 24th September 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the bar: Protest Poetry […]
Poem in Dust Poetry Magazine
I’m absolutely delighted to have a poem featured in Issue 5 of Dust Poetry Magazine, which came out today. It is a beautifully presented on-line magazine, and the poems are of a very high standard, including one by the fabulous Jenny Mitchell, winner of the Segora Poetry Prize 2020, the Fosseway Poetry Prize 2020, a […]
A String of Pigeons
I count them on the power line:one, two, three, four, five pigeons,plump, grey, grumbling curmudgeons,with the occasional coyish coothat helped me througha pandemic void of company,a string of them, comical and pearly.Just before sunset,a window in the tumbling cloud,accompanied by a loudclap of wings, they explodelike fireworks that have lost their sparksinto the fading light,their […]
Thinking
Mother Nature fell asleep thinkingand her thoughts became dreamsinto rich, dark soil sinking. Nothing in this world is ever as it seemsand her fantasies took root,watered by rain and underground streams. By spring, the roots had given birth to shootsthat sought the warmth of the sun,and the shoots grew and began to produce stalks and […]
Invocation to the Wise Women
Misunderstood throughout history,tortured, drowned and burnt at the stake,you scrutinise Trumpian mockeryamid the terrible intensityof wildfires, plague and death,and all their haunted weirdness. You have seen us at our worst;this wicked summer we have seen it too,and we rue our inaction in the face of doom. Forget the shaman, Chiron and Mentor,all male, all muscle-bound […]
Expression in the Blue
One autumn morning,when I came down,the autumn skywas wearing a frown.A myriad of cloudshad wrinkled its browinto an expressionof not quite sorrow –nevertheless,the blue was furrowed –waiting for the sun to turn it to gold. Kim M. Russell, 21st September 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille: The […]
writing in north norfolk 