At the bottom of the garden, just beyond the gate is a perfect, peaceful bench where I can sit and wait in the company of dragonflies, swans and their faithful mates. Soothed by sun-spangled water, hypnotised by boats, I anticipate a flash, a kingfisher flame to skitter low and coruscate, bubble and ripple in the […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Lazy Days
The air is intense and fragrant with meadowsweet and elder, the burn of summer a reminder that everything is changing. Seasons will always come and go, the moon and love will wax and wane, giving us another reason to lie down in green meadows, breathe in the sweet trickle of bee-kissed honeysuckle and slumber lazy […]
Flash Burn
After the bomb, when radiation wreaked its devastation and the world turned monochrome, life leached from crooked limbs of blackened trees and poisoned humans. In the midst of chaos and confusion, a mother’s love lit up the sky, just like the radiation before the mushroom imprinted shadows on our souls. Kim M. Russell, 1st July […]
Little Star
It doesn’t matter if you forget the positions of stars in the night sky; the delicate pattern of freckles on your skin is a map of constellations from which I will sing fairy tales, nursery rhymes and lullabies to the music of the galaxies. Kim M. Russell, 24th June 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden […]
Sick Room
It is the season of drifting scents, honeysuckle morphine in the dark and the ether of phlox and stocks. Outside, the first summer roses fade. He wants to take secateurs, deadhead delicate corpses, but cannot bear to touch petals the colour of bruised skin or inhale the cloying breath of flowers like the ones in […]
No Regrets
Dad was surrounded all his life by sisters, mother, daughters and a wife; I never saw up close the bond between a father and son. I often wondered how Dad would have been if he’d had a son to kick a ball about, swing a bat at cricket, to rough and tumble play-fight. I tried […]
What is the Essence of a Cat?
Is it a purr or the brush of fur against a human cheek? Is it the curl of a curious tail or the tongue that licks it sleek? Is it a velvet paw, the kneading of sharp claws or a pleading squeak? Is it the surprise of a pair of jade or amber eyes and […]
Nature Always Finds a Way
In the hedgerow, a robin spills its joy at weeds and wildflowers unfurling and greening cracks in the pavement, graveyards and verges. It cocks its head and blinks its eye at a trembling of finches in the sky with flashes of yellow and bursts of twittering. Nature always finds a way: midsummer’s insects are only […]
What is Truth?
Truth is not ceramic moulded and fired only to be smashed in hard light of day. Kim M. Russell, 10th June 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Fussy Little Forms: Tetractys Marian wants us to try a simple and elegant form this weekend that may allow us to focus on balance: it […]
Kissing in the Rain
We inhale scent of roadside pines infused in each raindrop that silver-spatters needles and, snail-like, trickles down their sodden spines. A tidal sussuration, the forest weeps with kisame; we taste rain on our lips: teardrops kissing raindrops, kissing you kissing me. Kim M. Russell, 7th June 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads […]
writing in north norfolk 