I call out to you in the dead of night. Dawn seems so far away. Enlightenment is shrouded in shadow. A moment of solitary despair. A moonbeam of ecstasy and words appear. The hoot and screech of owls pivot the changing light. Even a poet feels the weight of sleep heavy on her eyes, when […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
First Spring in Norfolk
My daughter and I moved to Norfolk in March 1992. We’d only had a few holidays here and were moving from the hustle and bustle of London to a small village on the North Norfolk coast with no street lights, a bus to Norwich twice a day – and we knew nobody. We threw ourselves […]
Cobbles Lanes and Courtyards
There is comfort to be found in cobbles, lanes and courtyards oozing with medieval mystery. This fine city slips on like a pair of favourite shoes laced up with familiarity. Sunlight flickers off the Wensum as it wends its way past churches, one for every week, and pubs, one for every day of the year, […]
Light Stories
We spend our lives unhooking the moon, trying to release all the light we cannot see. We look for knives and find only silver spoons to carve the cheese from her lunar seas. In the end we are bereft and we are left with the particular sadness of lemon cake, too sour upon our moon-kissed […]
Love Locked in a Time Warp
The past became a foreign place; love was more abundant there, with tangled beads, cheesecloth and lace, and everyone had longer hair. His was auburn and thick, and she longed to run her fingers through it. She watched and waited every day for him to pass her way when they were younger – she remembered […]
The Mouse in the Cupboard
If I talk to the mouse in the cupboard, even through the crack in the door, the cats will be jealous, the crumbs will be eaten, and I’ll have to go out for some more. If I sing to the mouse in the cupboard, I might just scare her away; she’s great company, in the […]
Reined by Strings
Kim M. Russell, 10th April 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Poems in April Day 10: Open a Book For the tenth challenge of this NaPoWriMo, Anmol with like us to pick up any books lying closest to us or pick them from our bookshelves: poetry collections, novels, dictionaries, telephone directories… we […]
Only a Dream
She longs for clandestine meetings in the middle of the night; moonlit, shadow-filled secret trysts are always fleeting. She’s left crying for more substance and feeling dissatisfied with the hoots and screams of owls, the cobweb caresses of the ghosts in the corner arousing only small emotions – compared to the great love of which […]
Dummy
You’re not on stage with your rictus grin or safe in your box and the darkness within, and no familiar hand is shoved into your head. With an audience like this you’re better off dead – but you’re not even alive, you dummy, and today’s woodwork class doesn’t think you’re funny. With their chisels, hammers […]
Etiquette
A pretty word is etiquette, similar to pirouette, yet it rhymes with petty mundane things like vinaigrette, eau de toilette, kitchenette, flannelette or washing at the launderette, leatherette or stockinette, or even string-pulled marionettes. I prefer the dark romance of a planchette or a silhouette. I’d rather be a suffragette. Kim M. Russell, 7th April […]
writing in north norfolk 