They kept vigil throughout the night, watching every movement, every breath, every flicker of dwindling candlelight, shadowy fingers of encroaching death, until the welcome morning light gently caressed the child’s fretting face and soothed away the livid, bright red of fever. All those missed heartbeats crashed together with relief at the sight of the child’s […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Waiting for Sleep to Come
Each night I walk observing graves tended and untended, order and disorder. My head- stone is blotched with moss and lichen, my brief story blotted out. I shimmer in the silver moon- light, skim long grass and weeds dusted with dandelion and thistle seeds between lych gate and porch, where closely-mown grass scorched over summer. […]
Memories on the Breeze
More than one hundred and fifty years ago the garden belonged to someone else, a different family. Back then the trees were mere saplings, there was a neat path, fragrant roses, herb garden and vegetable patch. Life was simpler, with fewer gadgets, neighbours and expectations. It was quieter and slower paced. The inhabitants of the […]
A Message from the Crows
She lingers by the lane, in the interregnum of autumn, an exhalation of green, watching glossy crows gather over stubbled fields of faded ochre, sewn delicately with bales and rustling with dragonflies. The end-of-day sun casts a murder of shadows, letters from above, the winged initials of her one true love. Kim M. Russell, 12th […]
Bird Brain
Her brain is a riot of knapweed on which twittering finches feed, keeping her awake at night and drowning out each thought when she rises. She longs to see a chestnut or a walnut tree with broad crown and dangling fruit, or bushes of plump blackberries, but she cannot leave these walls, cannot stretch her […]
Leaf Thief
The wind is boasting. I try to turn a deaf ear but it whispers louder, forcing me to hear about the havoc it wreaked in the topmost branches of the beech trees, and the leaves it has nicked and blown from there to here. Kim M. Russell, 9th September 2019 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Geranium Revisited
It emerges like a blush from variegated leaves, a beauty hidden in a bush beneath overhanging eaves. Its petals radiate scarlet and the whole plant exudes the intoxicating scent of harlot, earthy and a little rude, with citrus zest and peppery hot, a geranium blooming in a pot. Kim M. Russell, 5th September 2019 My […]
