Bits of twig and uprooted willows tangle in hollow bank-side shadows haunted by a mist of winter gnats. Hoar frost sparkles on the slats of rowing boats and canoes, abandoned like a giant’s shoes, the kind you find at the side of a road, dumped without its pair. Bubbles implode in the eddy of a […]
Tag: dverse Poets Pub
Tapping
Stubborn leaves bristle branches in a whickering wind; frost has finished off apples in the grass – it’s cold enough to light a fire. From the heart of steely winter silence, something hard taps on glass. I check windows, see only winter sky where black bones of twigs scrape at emptiness. Kneeling on the floor […]
Crunch Time
It’s that time again: after the crunch of autumn leaves we face the bite of ice and snow on the bank of the frozen river at the edge of the year. We look across at the future and wonder where we go from here. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille: […]
Mirror Magic
The mirror in the garden pond is cracked with rushes, irises, rotting leaves and watercress; a single poppy lingers on, pale petals promise oblivion. In the mirror of the garden spade, a toad with its glittering topaz gaze, legs akimbo and puffed up body dangles from the shiny blade, toxin flooding warty membrane. Mirror, mirror […]
No Cinderella
I don’t need to change into a princess or a pumpkin, a glass slipper or a mouse. Poetry does that with its ins and outs of words and rhymes, the ups and downs of stanzas and lines. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: Change Paul is our host today […]
Best Laid
These days I don’t lay my pen down while I think – it’s a computer mouse, which has reminded me of Robert Burns, his wee timorous Mousie and best laid plans. I have the messiest desk and study, with piles of correspondence, letters, poems to submit and paper to recycle, as well as my boxes […]
Comfort
I shiver in the empty white field, watch as snowflakes melt on my lashes, nibble frozen stalks of grass, icy glass against my chattering teeth. They fall heavy in my hollow gut. The sun’s long up, milky drops through bulky clouds. Crows throw stark shadows in lacy branches that move with the hours until the […]
Seabirds
Sullen and slate-grey, the sky lights up slowly, in its own good time, rinsed with lemon luminescence, a bleached handkerchief embroidered with distant gulls. Smaller seabirds, snatched by the polar wind, flutter like leaves, tumbling acrobats that land and curtsey on salt encrusted rocks. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille: […]
Baring your Soul
Sand is resistant to your feet and teases tight muscles in your thighs. You brave the boisterous breeze buffeting distinctive scents of salt and life. Through a pall of blue spray the sun burns bronze, then vanishes altogether; you close your eyes on the drab despair of weather. Screaming gulls spill into the sea and […]
Air Taxi
Oh for a taxi that doesn’t bump and jolt, brake sharply at traffic lights, speed off into a rainy night leaving me behind. Balloons would be nice, of various colours and sizes, to make the journey smooth and a driver whose opinions are few and far between, so I can enjoy the airiness and comfort […]
writing in north norfolk 