On warm days, when the fire’s unlit, one or two pigeons often sit on the roof and on a chimney pot, where, of course, it’s no longer hot and there’s no chance of being choked by the ever-swirling smoke of winter. In spring and summer, when I’m busy in the kitchen, I hear the pigeons’ […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Rain
These curtains so accurately drawn in water on my windowpane remind me of briny tears, the way they ran in perfect vertical lines down the misty windscreen with the broken windscreen wiper that day on the storm tossed seafront. Even the urchin seagulls hugged the gritty beach. Who knew that distance could hurt so much? […]
Patterns of Ice and Water
We are frozen, Ice Age wasteland distilled in our bones and cart-wheeling in the blizzard of the imagination. We move together with clouds, snow and water, in a geometric dance, tessellated into landscapes of free-art fractal frost. We are wind patterns on snow, hoar frost flowers and lonely glaciers until, one morning, the skeins of […]
After Sunset
It’s as late as afternoon can get, the in-between time, when the light is low and golden on the brink of night, and the horizon is haunted by the silhouette of a spiny hawthorn tree blossoming white. The witch of Beltane protects us from the bite of vampires and other creatures of darkness, yet allows […]
Clouds in my Coffee
I stir my coffee with a sticky spoon, feel the grit of sugar where my wrist rests on the table. Big clouds loom, push eastwards and then turn to mist. A rain shower comes and goes. Customers shake umbrellas and rain coats in the doorway of this sad café. In the steam, a small biplane […]
Maenad Madness
What you doing with that ivy, sister? Pretending it’s a snake like that one on Instagram. Didn’t we get wasted last night, man! Yeah, we had a right scream! My lips are still black with all the red wine. My head’s all over the place with ecstasy. LOL – mine’s so bad I can’t see. […]
Poetic Pollen
I inhale yellow: pollen dances on sunlight inhabiting air. Two geese overhead; their wing beats stir the cherry pink and freshly bloomed. Pollen-dusted bees zip in and out of flowers – honeyed promises. Kim M. Russell, 20th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Weekend Mini-Challenge, in April: Three Spring Shorts Magaly […]
Fickle
April is a fickle month: she trips a teetering path through trees mad with ticking, tuneful birds, waking butterflies and bees. She dodges scattered earth and rocks behind a plough; sprinkles tender leaves and shoots with showers; spreads green foam through winter’s mud and, in lengthening evening hours, plays with last thrills of light. Kim […]
Unexpected Bells
‘The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of flowers.’ Matsuo Basho Silence drips into the sodden solitude of a deep druidic wood, goose-pimple chilled and tangle wild. All at once, the path Is broken by a sunny glade scattered with spikes of new nettle growth and, ringing through the leafy […]
Beautiful Prisoners
giant crack willows burst open with verdant joy slender prisoners on early release, riding the breath of an April breeze Kim M. Russell, 17th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 17: Somewhere in the midst of stirring April Sanaa is our host today and she brings us […]
writing in north norfolk 