In the hedgerows on this peaceful morning, the green and yellow backdrop is torn by waxwings. With tricorn head feathers and ‘stand and deliver’ masks, they flourish their plumage and spread wing tips, waxy red to seal their Bohemian spring courtship. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Image found on rspb.org.uk My response to Imaginary Garden with […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Prune
The breeze is chilly, sky a polished azure, melted-butter primroses peep between my roots, a metaphor ripe for plucking. Unlike me, a wizened plum tree who should be in her prime, bearing scented blossom and sweet fruit, time after time. I stand in shadows of resilient birches and willows, slender branches bursting with bud and […]
Spring Forecast
Tiny coal-black fists raised on naked twigs threaten to open into purple Fraxinus blossom: if the ash before the oak, then we’ll surely have a soak. But then I spot a haze of ginger Quercus buds, an Easter bonnet veil around grey branches: if the oak before the ash, then we’ll only have a splash. […]
Uncharted
Am I a fool to want to float, to sail away on a leaky boat, exploring life on canals and rivers, trimming sails in all kinds of weather until I reach the estuary, the final frontier before open sea, uncharted depths that terrify me? Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real […]
Kölsch[1]
Kölle Alaaf![2] I miss the echo in the streets, the crowds on Rudolfplatz and Neumarkt[3], the oompa pa of familiar Fastelovend[4] songs and cries of ‘Kamelle!’[5] as sweets hailed down. You helped me dress up as a clown. I drank cold Kölsch, ate salty Pommes mit Mayonnais’.[6] You taught me the words to ‘Mer losse d’r […]
Three
Her life is a trilogy, an unholy trinity in a three-dimensional world: past, present, future, unaligned, thrice the fun and three times the pain, again and again and again, tied to herself in a three-legged race, she is three-faced. Kim M. Russell, 2017 Laura Williams My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge #158 and linked […]
Poetic Purring
At peep of morning I hear the soft pad of a poem on the bedroom floor. A darker shadow sharpens in the gloom of my room and jade gems burn amber in strengthening beams of light. Verbs of velvet paws, sharp nouns and adjectives of claws swipe and glint at dust motes forming into stanzas. […]
Twinkle
I read in a report only yesterday about a study of the Milky Way, in which scientists listen to stars as they quake. Oscillating and flashing with energy, they chime like bells in a cosmic belfry, ringing the rhymes of a stellar nursery. Shimmering with a stardust lustre, playing the music of an ancient cluster, […]
Toxic
No colour caresses the toxicity of a love that grips with talons grey, leeches tints of happiness and reduces them to a foggy day. Kidnapped by a tainted heart, blinded by choking smoke of mute obsession, she has no more tears left to cry for his transgression. Kim M. Russell, 2017 – Josh Hayes My […]
Heart’s Compass
I spent years in different places, painting walls and hanging blinds. I got to know many faces, landscapes, tastes and sounds, lacing fragile ties and pulling them apart again before I could acclimatise to nuances of sun and rain. I longed for a little place where I could set down roots, pulling it on each day […]
writing in north norfolk 