In the glaucous state of becoming, she recalled the words she was singing in her dream: ‘Willow weep for me’. Her hair was delicate branches, her thoughts rain-scented leaves. She had been warned not to cry beneath a willow. Now it clasped her in an everlasting embrace and the grooves in its trunk traced the lines […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Wakeful
First flush of morning percolates through crepuscular dreams, lays first thoughts behind sleep-encrusted lids. Words hatch and squirm, caterpillars to feed the hungry birds of creativity. No point in wrestling with the behe- moths that eat holes in the rags of night, let in first light. It’s time to write. Kim M. Russell, 2017 ‘Dance […]
Matisse and the Chair
The ancient instinct to collect becomes a working library. a laboratory of visual alchemy, an artist’s palette of reality, at its centre a Venetian baroque chair. Its silver gilt, green sea-monsters and curved seahorses become the source of coloured crayon outlines and details in layered oils: the portrait of a woman, curvaceous, adored, wooed with flowers […]
Christopher’s Pearl
I know your silhouette so well, your Baroque rotundity a pearl that has adorned the skyline for three centuries and more, and survived the destructive fires of war. You have witnessed eminent weddings, funerals and celebrations, of which reverberations still whisper round your gallery, an everlasting litany. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Image found on Pinterest […]
The girl in the corner…
that was me, knitting furiously, jumpers, hats and scarves, while sipping wine from a sticky glass and smoking roll-ups when a pattern got tough. I’d sing along to Neil Young and Joni, nod to prog rock, smiling shyly, never one to socialise, knitting in shadows of different plies. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to […]
Echoes of an Earlier Landscape
Early light has been diffused to an apricot glow, dappled with fragments of cool, grey shadow, echoes of the wet earth of an earlier landscape. Soggy fields and marshes suffered centuries of drought; now precious juttings of sea-worn granite lure us out to where water once teemed with life. Now all that’s left are sweeping […]
Red Like Mars
Brick buildings, red like Mars on the horizon, are veiled in tatters of grey haze. Our civilisation planted on another planet is a seed that sprouted in healthier days. Will it grow and bloom or be reduced to sizzling weeds of doom? Meanwhile, back on the home planet, the microscopic water bear. also known as […]
Wave Washed
I’m under your skin, your nails and tongue; there’s so much left unsaid and undone. No number, no thunder of waves could wash me away, nor the terrifying teeth of a tempest gnaw every trace of bone. I am the scattered salt in every raindrop, the fingers that linger and drip down your pane, scratching […]
Balance
Life in the balance: on one side, the sum total […]
A Single Sprig
Tangible tranquillity crescendos throughout the day, reaching a climax at dusk. In woody eucalyptus of a sprig of rosemary, the town has remembered me. In its low, glowering skies, swarms of midges and horseflies, my wild memories linger. Kim M. Russell, 2017 wild memories – image by Magaly Guerrero (@magalyguerreroindarkerwords) My response to Imaginary Garden […]
writing in north norfolk 