This dream is a moon-faced owl shining brightly in a silver tree, its amber orbs cups of honey that drip sweetly in a sleeper’s eye. This dream is a rasping call that echoes through windy branches, the spiky tip of a nightmare’s tail brushing against a windowpane illuminated with star-fall – before it flicks and […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Wild Fruit
In the garden centre nursery, young raspberry plants long to break free from pots, and run wild in soil: sharpen up their thorns, let their pale green leaves unfurl and plump up ruby globes fit to burst sweetly on our tongues – to be sprung! Kim M. Russell, 27th January 2020 My poem for dVerse […]
Only a Rehearsal
This week I’ve been training. All I’ve had to do is sit and watch for birds. Mostly it was raining; feathered creatures sat in the hedge and observed me through raindrops watching them through raindrops that plopped and spat on the windows. A pair of robins and some finches ganged up with a thrush and […]
What She Told Her
She always knew the little dark-haired, brown-eyed child was her mother’s secret. She’d kept the outings in a stranger’s car, ice creams at the airport and seaside trips close to her chest, being only five or six, and loving mystery. When the baby arrived, nobody said a word. There were whispers behind closed doors. The […]
Mudlarking
After winter’s blast, a gang of us swarms the banks of the Thames beneath a leaden sky, picking our way through mud contaminated with sewage, slippery and sucking at our boots. We wear our hungry faces like masks, our hands red and purple from the icy wind. Occasionally, a cry goes up as someone skids […]
A Welcome Pause after December Rain
At the window, I watch a sparrow strip berries from the hedgerow. The magpie has ceased its chatter, contemplating things that matter before giving its opinions on the day. And now the sparrow has flown away. Except for a cat that gently purrs, I sit here at my desk alone, my fingers chilled to the […]
Wonderful Alien
Wide-eyed and full of wonder, you hold my hand and guide me through your world. I can only blunder, an ancient alien who has lived here too long to appreciate a single leaf, a muddy pebble or the sun on water. Now I have your eyes to discover the beautiful among the fearful, forget for […]
Tempest
The sea awakens as a kraken from steady in-and-out of sleep, rises from the deep, utters a staccato stutter of briny breath (with undertones of birth and death). Its growl grows, rocks and rolls waves into oceanic roar, a seismic tempest never heard before. Kim M. Russell, 13th January 2020 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Breaking the Silence of January
After the revelry of Christmas and New Year, the silence of January is solid as a block of ice, occasionally melting into shifting swathes of mist grey as wood pigeons and musty house mice. No gentle coo, whistle or twitter of birds, the day is mute; no body warmth or human words until the fire’s […]
Enigma
We need iron in our blood to carry oxygen from lungs to cells, and yet iron left in damp air will rust and its shiny grey will crust with red. The earth is rich and hard with iron, mined for making steel, its solidity tempered and twisted into buildings, pylons and bridges, and its smoothness […]
writing in north norfolk 