With the sarcastic percussion of fingers on the table top, my heart used to skip a beat. I longed for the comforting generosity of chimes in a summer garden instead of the irascible crash of cymbals, a teenage girl flouncing out the door; I don’t hear that any more. Kim M. Russell, 26th January 2019 […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
This poet needs…
to ease the itch of words that wake her up at night; to sing in a different language, one with imagery and bite; to linger in lines where no other poet has been yet; to smile to herself when other people get where she comes from and what she needs. Kim M. Russell, 24th January […]
Shedding Skin
The first time I shed skin, my tongue probed the blade of a new language, tasted unfamiliar vowels and consonants, bled new words and poems. The second time I shed skin, the words were mine but the tune was new, lilting and green. The last time I shed skin, the landscape taught me everything I […]
A Frosty Night
On this frosty night, stars blow themselves to smither- eens and fall like feathers. Silvery hisses and splutters of white noise in my ears rush like the ocean on shingle, a symphony of moonlight, on this frosty night. Kim M. Russell, 19th January 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Weekend Mini-Challenge: Mustn’t […]
Selma the Cryptic Cryptid
A cryptic cryptid, Selma’s obscured in the icy depths of Lake Seljord through the long, dark Norwegian winters. She surfaces during hot, quiet summers, playing hide and seek in the fjords, searching for love with an elusive mate, another ferocious monster of the lake. Kim M. Russell, 17th January 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden […]
A Need to Know Basis
You need to know, I have a fragile muse fashioned from Venetian glass, blown out and close to shattering. Despite that, we climb aboard a gondola and enter the shadow of the Bridge of Sighs, sighing and shivering from the sudden chill. But Venice has its own poetry. The city knows which form to use […]
A Hollow Season
Oh, season of hollow darkness and silence! When the blackbird sings before Christmas, she will cry before Candlemas, is how the saying goes; so I forgive the muted blackbird and thank the thrush for singing sweet promises of spring despite threats of frost and snow. Kim M. Russell, 12th January 2019 My response to Imaginary […]
Words and Feet
We welcomed them eighty years ago from the shadows of the night of broken glass to the streets of Britain and beyond, child refugees, hungry and scared, in need of homes. History should not be allowed to repeat itself; it’s our turn to act, to learn from the past and protect children fleeing conflict and […]
On the back of the bathroom door…
hangs the cosiest cardigan, the one I hug to me in the early morning; that embraces me while brewing the first cup of tea; that warms me as I write a chilly January poem; the one that shields me from the sneaky draught that evades the excluder and, unwarmed by the log burner, wraps itself […]
Mothspell
I wander in the standing stones, gather objects for potions: hemlock parts and gossamer, eye of toad and an owl’s feather. A celestial light show sparks and suddenly, without a flutter, a moth is trapped in a halo of moonlight and I am rapt; lured by a death head’s powdered pinion – a fatal attraction. […]
writing in north norfolk 