“There’s something in the walls,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me through the front door. We stood in the hallway, listening, my mother with her ear against the wall. Outside, the wind was dancing a mazurka, spinning branches in its embrace, lifting the door knocker and tapping to come in. “See,” I said. […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
November Monday
Monday is the colour of sky,the first day of the weekas fresh as washing on a line. This November Monday,there’s a musty yellow scent,an ochre aroma of decay, like a pumpkin or a melon,overripe and mushy mellow,not citrus-sharp like lemons. This Monday’s weatheris washed into a muddy green,sun and wind and rain together, mixed up […]
November Burning
Leaf-flame disappears from trees,doused into a sodden massbeneath my boot-clad feet,kicked until the limp leaves liftand fall – again. Drizzle develops into steady rain,but neighbours are intent on rakingand burning. Pungent billowspermeate lank laundryon the washing line. Boots off, safe and dry indoors,the first fire of the season roars,releasing smoky memoriesof the November mornwhen she […]
Sporous
Early raindropspatterand the blackmatterof the forest exhales,richand slow,happy spores that spread and grow. Exquisitemother-of-pearl,puff-balled and ink-cappedmushrooms twirla polka with scarlet dotted toadstools,at the annual fungus festival,tripping psychedelichappiness with fly agaric. Kim M. Russell, 2nd October 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Monday Quadrille: In Need of a Happiness Project Lille would like us to […]
Greening the Mind
Word-bound, I watch the coming winterhaunt the garden, eager to paint it silver. I count the rags of blue sky overhead,topped with grumbling thunderheads, savour the smell of rich black earth, the gleamof gold and lemon, not quite drowning out the green. Trees drip with limpid air this green-gold morninglike words from my poetic pen, […]
Autumn’s Folly
She paints the landscape red and gold,cossets fruit, more than we can hold, silvers webs and tinkers with the lightonly to plunge us into wintry night. Her leafy folly flutters and decays,the fruits of her labour last but days, winter haunts her with ghostly mistand bids her goodbye with an icy kiss. Kim M. Russell, […]
What you can’t see can’t hurt you
I was pregnant and staying with friends in the one-storey lodge house of an old priests’ college in the middle of Ireland. Although allowed in the college grounds, my friends kept to their own garden, put off by tales of a death in the swimming pool, long fallen into disrepair, and ghosts from the private […]
A Walk in the Cemetery by Moonlight
A celebration before winter darkness,fingering crumbled earth with brightness, moonlight creeps through autumn turbulenceto gild gravestones hunkered in silence. Pale breath of lunar light tongues dustamong tattered leaves now turned to rust and scattered on well-trodden stones,traces epitaphs and seeks out bones, meagre offerings for a midnight repastbefore the cold season’s hollow fast. Something […]
Wind Music
Safe inside, we listen to the howling wind as it rips up foliage and tears limb from limb branches from ancient birch and oak. Ghostly draughts creep into every nook and cranny, they squeeze under doors and whistle dirges down the chimney. Outside, the wind, still duetting with the trees, sighs in more steadfast branches […]
Dreams by Candlelight
I fell asleepin the pale heatand candle salve of twilight,nodding to an open book. In a pellucid questfor hallowed rest,my yellow dreamsploughed lucid farrowstowards the sunriseof my tomorrow. Kim M. Russell, 20th October 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: The Charms of Samuel Greenberg Laura is back to host Poetics this week, with […]
writing in north norfolk 