You asked for a clean slate, one with your own face on, and a rainbow of colours to brighten up your frown. You tried so many different smiles, noses and eyebrows, a range of wigs and hats, but it wasn’t until you turned upside down, with your hands planted firmly on the ground and your […]
A Pocketful of Time
Their childhood pockets were always full of stuff: fluff-covered sweets, stubs of pencils, rubber bands, and tiny plastic figures from breakfast cereal, their currency to trade and play with on a rainy afternoon. That afternoon, when it is over, said and done, it was a time – and there was never enough of it […]
This Green and Pleasant Land
So many shades of green, with brown and ochre in between, and flowers sewing up the edges with wild brambles and tidy hedges. I often long for higher hills, a mountain would be better still, but this flat landscape stretches wide, and touches an enormous sky on a horizon laced by wind-sculpted trees that dips […]
Smiling in the Sun
Early afternoon sun dapples the half-raised window blind, the part of my desk where the computer mouse sits on its mat, and my cold cranberry tea, ruby red and sparkling. Outside, crimson-berried honeysuckle and wilted orange lilies, wrinkled and raggedy, dance on the breeze, and a butterfly flutters by, tempted by potato plants and courgette […]
In the Frame
On this August day, the breeze ripples green leaves in the quince, plum and willow trees, buffeting an army of tall stinging nettles. Inside the shed, greyed by weather and age, the brambles are uprising, sharp-thorned and striving to escape; they’ve broken a window and are prising the door from its frame. A white plastic […]
A Taste of Southern Comfort
Fifty was a special birthday for me: I had a new teaching post to start in September, my daughter had come home to celebrate with us, and I had completed half a century pretty much unscathed. I opened cards and a few presents and was feeling good. I knew that my husband was planning something, […]
Strange Weekend
Saturday was my first outing, all masked up and nowhere to go but the supermarket, strolling with my basket, calm and clean, with civilised social distancing in wide aisles, touching the inhaler in my pocket, no panic, no fear, husband always near. The Sunday walk was leisurely, a lot of heat but a little breezy, […]
On the anniversary of your death
Only a few days away, and nine years on, I recall the luminous hope that opened like a flower in my heart, when you opened your eyes. Death had not got its way. You perched on the windowsill of life, not yet ready to spread your wings, still tethered by earthly things. Hope was still […]
Almost Harvest
no dawn chorus rising later every day sunflowers ripe wheat unmoving in the field a splash of poppies brittle with heat leaves already yellow awaiting release scarecrow silhouette leaning west towards the sun redundancy silent blackbirds in their annual moult counting feathers Kim M. Russell, 30th July 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting […]
writing in north norfolk 