Into the Sea

We are crumbling, eroding into ­                       the sea with our pigmentations of blue, brown and green, accompanied by a withering wind and scent of rain. Dithering on mouldering marsh and ­                                […]

Skyful of Hope

On a moist and mizzling day, my skin is pearled with gossamer mist, eyes wide with the expanse of grey above me, dotted with a scattering of distant birds. There is only emptiness and portents of winter in the yawning sky, and the days seem filled with loneliness. But when evening comes and the cloud […]

Sculpting the Coastline Together Again

My fingers itch as I watch clouds racing across a bracing sky. Wind wrestles everything into flux, bowls waves against an unforgiving fractured coast. Sea booms and boasts, spits salty spray, whips hair, seaweed and marram into a melee. My hands tingle with a defiant energy, gather crumbs of cliff and tumbled rocks, melt them […]

Vincent’s Valentine

Vincent said, “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” But Vincent, when you braved love’s snarling thicket, you didn’t expect nervous coughs in quiet rooms. You believed that fungus and algae are stronger together, survive every kind of weather. Now, you gaze at your lover and see no white doves but a […]

Ode to a Stranded Whale

You beach your beautyon the back of geo-magnetic storms. Spellbinding as pulsating northern lights,you offered songs to the nightbut were drawn by siren stars, lured off course and hurledthrough waves of coronal mass ejection,fought hard to correct your navigation. You collided with the shoreand now you lie, exposedto the cosmos, foamy flukes glinting in starlight,your […]

Slipping

The circus is over; curses escape rouged lips, the mask slips, dripping with clay lumpen and grey. Clown hands squeeze, poking dreams filled with screams trapped in a false face – a frozen grimace. Kim M. Russell, 2016 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: The Metaphorical Mask, also linked to earthweal open link […]

Screaming in Spring

At crack of sparrow bone,the dawn chorus begins. I moanwhen winged visitors make city spirits soar:birds madly squabbling for a morselfallenfrom the feeder is less a roarand more a scream.Diligent blackbirds turn over voluminous deadleaves by the shedand a robin settles on the narrowchain fence, all atrembleat the zenosyne advance of spring overmorrow. Kim M. Russell, […]

Phoenix Trees

(to be read from the roots up) into a fresh spring breeze. pump pollen and on bare branches wriggle will catkins and new green leaves Soon roots and shoots. branches, slender resilient and stubborn spread storm, by a over bowled toppled, having trunks, Crumbling Kim M. Russell, 2017 Jennifer Vranes – “New Beginnings” My response […]