The fragile paper almost torewith the pressure of her pen,ink blotting, words bleeding.So she wrote it out againon thicker vellum. The original words had fallenlike confetti from her hand – butwhen she copied them out,they did not express her emotion;they seemed flat. Heart fluttering with frustration,hand slick with perspiration,she focused on the punctuation;the final full […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Quality Control
Clay is moist in their hands.They probe it with damp fingers,feel resistance until they simultaneouslythrow it on their wheelswith a wet thud. Percussion. The rhythm of the kick wheelgives them impetus to kneadand sculpt, and shapes emerge, breathingtogether with their creators,merging into a breeze. A windy symphony. Each pot has its maker’sfingerprints, though pots strivefor […]
Mist-Layered Morning
Under the bone of a mist-whirled fading moon,skeletal flowers are drip-laden, rotting yellow starsagainst the rain-glistened brown of soggy loam.Drifting through the mist-layered morning, soft as a whispertangled with chimney smoke, the descant of birdsong,and a fox’s tenor bark. Kim M. Russell, 3rd November 2025 For this week’s Quadrille Monday at the dVerse Poets Pub […]
Invasion
Among the roots of dying and dead trees,they creep, no fun these parasitic mutantsall feasting on decay. No friends are these;Armillaria are spored pollutants,the bogeymen of stumps, and oh, so potent.With eerie shapes and honey fungus breath,they’re saprophytes of dieback, rot and death,as white as ghosts, they haunt both branch and bark,and trunk and roots […]
A Poet’s Nightmare on Elm Street
Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep, or poetry will follow you. Light slices through darkness, where poets encounter the unexpected. Imagery lurks in corners of dreams like monsters underneath your bed. Elm Street might be shady but, like mushrooms, poems need darkness to sprout. And poets, there’s no point in cowering and […]
The Ghost Train
One of the best plays I’ve seen at the Theatre Royal in Norwich was Arnold Ridley’s ‘The Ghost Train’, a stage comedy-thriller, written in 1923, set in a remote rural station, where railway passengers have been stranded overnight. The station master tries to persuade them to leave so he can lock up for the night, […]
Lifting the last potatoes before first frost sets in
After weeks of rain, the allotments gleam;in a month or so they’ll sparkle with a frosty sheen. Groups of men huddle, boots covered in muck,cocking an ear as they lift them with a suck. It’s about time that they got down to workand, grabbing their buckets and trusty forks, they set off to their individual […]
The Magic of Sparklers
Gloved hands grippedthem tightly, wandsof metal wire, seemingly fragileyet full of powerful magic. Lips rounded in oohs,we were not old enoughto understand the chemistryof oxidisers and binders. We knew only bright sparks,patterns we drew in the dark. Kim M. Russell, 20th October 2025 This Monday is a sparkler of a day at the dVerse Poets […]
Ilse
As much as dill and pickled cucumbers,it’s the cherries that I remember most,growing on two trees outside my window,dark red, fragrant and so sweet. I remember, too, the blossoms every spring.As well as dill and pickled cucumbersin huge jars lined up in the cellar,you preserved cherries in alcohol for winter. From the fresh cherries that […]
Haunting Aimlessly
The antiquities museum is bereftonce all the visitors have left, until October moonlight breaksthe darkness, shaking halls awake. He sits upon a muzzle-less horse,the rider’s lost his head of course. He cannot ride, dismount or stand,he has no legs, feet, arms or hands. Moon-bathed they start to come alive,horse and rider spectrally strive to canter […]
writing in north norfolk 