Along the fields and lanes, sloe and blackthorn hedges are humming with bees. Beneath the trees and along the edges, bluebells cast a heady scent into a wistful April breeze that teases the branches of overdressed trees, spilling pollen, a sugary omen of fruitfulness. In morning’s flickering light and shadow, crocuses beckon with purple and […]
Tag: Get Listed!
The last time I saw her
there was a clamour in my soul’s anatomy, a sixth sense enmeshed in a daughter’s flesh. I held her fragile hand, touched fingernails, like fractured shells embedded in sand. The lump of imminent loss stuck in my throat like a dry piece of toast can never be swallowed. I cannot forget how her sacrifice spread […]
A Yellow Smile
On this March afternoon outside my dusty window, a smudge in sunshine becomes a glint of lemon and flutters into view: the first spring butterfly flashes me a yellow smile. Kim M. Russell, 30th March 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Get Listed: Late March Edition Sanaa is back with ‘March: An […]
With the Volume Turned Down Way Too Low
I hope it’s only temporary, this cotton-wool muffle of everyday sound, with random crackle of static, constant shower of white noise and high-hat cymbal of gravel on an empty road. I’m bombarded with percussion when I want to hear words, a human voice, the television and the ring of the telephone. Until normal service is […]
Coming home…
late in the afternoon, I walk down an empty street when, at my feet, a russet leaf drops – and so does the wind. Like me, it settles into its October stillness, tired and sober, fading into twilight, slipping on the night. Kim M. Russell, 19th October 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real […]
Anguish
Anguished cries of lapwings rise from deep in sedgy fields to sky; their tinny raspings bring to mind an anguish of a different kind: the mewling of a starving child; a young girl’s screams as she’s defiled; a mother’s keening of despair; a grandmother’s calm and care as she sings a soothing lullaby of winter […]
Yellow butterflies…
illuminate the hedgerows imitating clouds of primrose landing on the sensual mouths of bluebell, scilla and hyacinth, intoxicated on their April scent Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo Get Listed: Poems In April Edition Sanaa has shared with us a spring poem about by Edna St. Vincent Millay. […]
Starlings and Stones
November starlings blacken hedges, strip scarlet berries, dip in sedges, weave through layers of stubble and thistle, a whirring cloud of clockwork birds. A sudden burst of warble and whistle lodges like stone in my arid throat and leaves me scrabbling for words. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads […]
Wings and Light
Along the beach, birds are returning from the Arctic; waders stop off to picnic in a brightly moonlit stretch of sandy slime: oystercatchers, sandpipers, curlews and snipe. Excited piping and haunting mournful cries follow us home where we are greeted by a kaleidoscope of moths congregating around the halo of the porch light: crumpled leaves […]
Bridge of Lies
He thought she was a sucker, a con man’s dream, taken in by promises of Italian ice cream, a bottle of prosecco and a gondola ride under the Rialto and the Bridge of Sighs. But she had built her own bridge of lies; an experienced hustler with a scam of her own, she took all […]
writing in north norfolk 