Flicker

Poems are born as tiny flickers from diverse seeds of our imagination that germinate, sprout and quicken, ready to be planted in other people’s minds, where they can bloom and flower or they can droop and wither in the frost of poets’ winter: misinterpretation. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Image found on Pinterest My response to […]

Sixties’ Summers

I have always associated summer months with my childhood in the sixties, with the holidays stretching out ahead of me. Mostly I was bored and missed the routine of school. But there were so many days spent with my grandfather in his garden, splashing under the hose when we should have been watering the roses. […]

Heavy Plant Crossing

The country road tilts and blends into a sudden blind bend, overhung with bush and tree, so dense that, at first, I do not see a red and white sign erupting from a pile of soil: heavy plant crossing. My imagination runs riot with giant hogweed and triffids evolved from seeds that drifted down from […]

Pepper

She offers him ­           ­a bright red capsicum, a  lonely heart, filled with peppery seeds. She holds her breath, ­           bares delicate, perfumed skin, anticipates a sharp knife’s  sting: seeds are spilled, ­           her heart sliced and diced into a hot stew, a […]

Midsummer Verges

Content in our garden’s leafy shade, I think back to weedy margins on a distant council estate, full of dandelions and significance, between pan-hot pavement and simmering black tar, a strip of withered grass, litter-strewn and dotted with dog mess, where bike wheels used to spin, click, tick; children clutched coins in sweaty hands at […]