I build the spell with witch hazel, a woody frame to brighten gloomy days with spidery flowers in sunset sprays, sublime with spicy scent. I bind the spell with tendrils of evergreen ivy to ward off evil spirits, its heart-shaped leaves glossy with friendship and fidelity. I add some sprigs of rosemary to help you […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Under the Table at Grandmother’s House
Although my grandmother was quite open and modern in her outlook, her tastes were old-fashioned. This was reflected in the house where I grew up: in its solid furniture, embroidered cushions and tablecloths that hung low to cover the table legs. For a small child, the dining table was a house or a tent, where […]
Caged Moon (a septet)
Willows, the anchors of life, felted with silvery grey, captured the moon and his wife in a basket canopy, where daddy longlegs rattle and candle flies do battle: at the end of a hot day. Kim M. Russell, 19th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Septets This Thursday, Frank Hubeny […]
Choking Nature
Humans record artistic impressions of patient Nature’s handiwork in a line of wind-tattered trees, a blanket hem along the skyline and curving sculptured hills, where skylarks rise from barley singing, and dissolve into the darkening welkin. Hills become shadows, the silence palpable over still-hot fields. And yet, in boroughs, towns and cities, greedy humans waste […]
Poetic Pruritis
A quadrille fidgets between fingers and beneath the skin, itches to be free with scratch of pen or fricative of key. A peculiar gnat-bite tingles with heat and buzzes with sounds and rhythm, has the poet wrangling with words in a vexation of stanzas. Kim M. Russell, 16th July 2018 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Careless
Sometimes, I can’t remember who I am. I look at photographs and wonder, where did she go, that carefree girl, that careful mother, so careless with herself? I often feel disjointed, as if part of me has broken off, a branch hanging, buffeted by the wind of time, and wonder, is it mine? When I […]
Black and White
ebony raven snowy owl coal-black carrion ghost pristine white spirit wing-clipped to the Tower […]
Dragonflying
It’s the vivid season when colours are like splashes from an artist’s palette: ochre fields untold shades of leaves and grasses […]
Measuring Time
When the whole world measured time in light and dark, descent and climb, civilisation was still new my child, an infant just like you. One drab June, we wandered ancient grounds, round rain-soaked prehistoric mounds, counting a nursery rhyme of stones. We imagined thousands of dawns and shadows pierced by shafts of light – the […]
Sick Room
It is the season of drifting scents, honeysuckle morphine in the dark and the ether of phlox and stocks. Outside, the first summer roses fade. He wants to take secateurs, deadhead delicate corpses, but cannot bear to touch petals the colour of bruised skin or inhale the cloying breath of flowers like the ones in […]
