Lonely Magpie

On a never-ending January day, the whole garden drips with silent grief. There are a few sparse, dried-up leaves clinging desperately to the willow, now pollarded and looking sorry for itself. No birds alight on its branches, not even the magpie, which has taken to haunting the silver birch right at the end near the […]

Bread-Making in Winter

For months frayed foliage has covered earth, the agèd year is faded to sepia shades and now it turns again to white and grey with early dusk as winter draws its breath. The frigid bite of January’s mellowed, outdone by the aroma, as it lingers, of yeast and flour wafting from your fingers, familiar scent […]

If I hadn’t written that poem

‘The world is never the same once a [good] poem has been added to it’. Dylan Thomas If I hadn’t looked up to search the heavens, would my soul ever have been soothed? I waited patiently for shooting stars to zip across the deepest, darkest winter sky – but the clouds were dense, obscured the […]

Field Fire

stubble still crackles burnt fields quiver their dry voices whisper in devastation’s backwind blackened trees shiver letting fly blackened bark and leaves – a whirlwind of charcoal and dust Kim M. Russell, 26th November 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Fire up that Creativity, also linked to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Tuesday […]

Waiting

I am waiting for the rain to stop. When it does, I will pull on wellies, shrug on a well-worn waterproof jacket and wrap a woollen scarf around my neck, ready for a walk in the woods. Raindrops trickle down the window pane in a race against time. I am waiting for the rain to […]