Is it a purr or the brush of fur against a human cheek? Is it the curl of a curious tail or the tongue that licks it sleek? Is it a velvet paw, the kneading of sharp claws or a pleading squeak? Is it the surprise of a pair of jade or amber eyes and […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Nature Always Finds a Way
In the hedgerow, a robin spills its joy at weeds and wildflowers unfurling and greening cracks in the pavement, graveyards and verges. It cocks its head and blinks its eye at a trembling of finches in the sky with flashes of yellow and bursts of twittering. Nature always finds a way: midsummer’s insects are only […]
Wild Bird Tamed
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was caged by my parents, by school and by petty rules of society: wear suitable clothes, don’t smoke, don’t drink, be home by ten, that sort of thing. I rebelled, escaped from the cage and did my own thing. Later, I felt trapped by responsibility: earning […]
Sonnet for my students
My students’ eyes are nothing like the sun, it is as if they are not yet awake; they yawn and shuffle in, but never run, until it gets to time for morning break. I have seen some of them arrive on time, to smile at me and greet me at the door. It is delightful […]
Autumn Ripe
I am no gaunt, leafless winter hawthorn: my trunk is not gnarled nor are my branches a twisted mass, no dark hoard of barbs. I am not creamy froth on outgrown hedges, no early dog rose drenched in dew or sun. I dance and rustle with fallen leaves and glow with autumn fruit, nut and […]
Invisible Friends
A summer-born child, I lived in my head, I drew, wrote, sang and read, peopling worlds with invisible friends to fill the space where reality ends. Now I feel winter creep into my bones and my poetic graffiti covers the stones, written in lichen of saffron and green; childhood’s buried where it can’t be seen. […]
Homeless
She hobbles over cobbles, oblivious to the flash of gold-finches in the branches of dusty urban trees. They tinkle as they gather round dandelion puffs to eat seeds, collect fluff for their cobbled-together nests, while she’s still looking for a night-time place to rest. Kim M. Russell, 4th May 2018 My response to dVerse Poets […]
It started with a raindrop…
from a cloud landing in mud. Within hours, shallow streams meander and bubble between banks of flowers burning above the flourishing flood. It gushes on, a convulsive weir, a torrent of energy trying to get back to where it was. The heat of the sun draws it up to a cloud and it becomes once […]
In Bleeding Heart Yard…
pulses quicken at fog-muffled footsteps on the cobbles. Along the soot-soaked lanes, pawn shops and tenements topple, and blackened windows weep tears of grime. They see it all: every good deed and every murderous crime, pickpockets, pimps and paupers, desperate drabs and abused daughters. The dross of life oozes, sobbing and mumbling from the murky […]
Sunrise Whispers
Yesterday morning, I woke up really early and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’d left the blind up in my study the previous evening and, just before five, peeking through the branches, the sun was a red ball hovering over the river. The house and garden were silent, not even a tweet of birdsong, but […]
writing in north norfolk 