As a child, art was my first love; I drew, chalked and painted freehand, thinking I knew it all. Then came the lesson on perspective. I couldn’t see the point in the distance where all the lines joined up. My landscape of road and houses was lopsided, a landslide tumbling down a non-existent mountain. A […]
Tag: Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
Burnished
How many brass lamps must be burnished before my wish is granted? Not even the golden lamps of autumn are furnished with a genie to do my bidding. And heaven has so many stars on which I’ve wished, all silver, like the moon, which gave me seven lines that rhyme, and this poem can be […]
Sharp Teeth
A flash of amber eyes in the twilight of the woods is answered with a growl from my own throat. I don’t claim to be a good mother, but I can howl and have a fierce heart, red as a hood. I gather them in the heat of my lupine love again, child and grandchild […]
Monochrome
Beneath the frost of November moon they murmur musky mist around the bone of tree-like antlers, a message of timeless continuity, melodic but wordless like the music of rain and flowing streams, or stars and comets rejoicing in their beams. Russet and lemon-yellow leaves no longer rustle but drift and rot, muting Earth the singer […]
One small voice in the shift between October and November
For days, the steady pounding rain drowned out the poetry that bubbled in my soul; my small voice hobbled, stuck in the mud of an old-fashioned October. But this morning, on the cusp of November, bright stained-glass shadows dappled the sodden grass, where unexpected sun illuminated the willow in the garden disrobing yellow leaves before […]
Flipped
It was a raging sea-magic kind of day, with thunder clouds and wind-whipped waves that made us mermaids forget salty witches. Oblivious to consequence, caught up in the rumpus, we anticipated handsome seamen snatched by squalls from a schooner’s deck, combed out the tangles in our waist-length hair and spread our glistening fish-tails on a […]
Shades of the Seashore
We walk along the blustery beach, embraced by towering arms of rock laced with white foam cuffs. Falling sheer to shore, sombre cliffs, banded with distorted strata of basalt, rusty iron, brown and buff, are broken by moss-cloaked boulders, moist with silver sea mist and rain, and crowned with gnarled oak, wind-blasted, salt-stunted limbs leaning […]
Through the Eyes of a Child
We watch a big blue tractor rumble by, his small body in my arms, straining to see more. Wide eyes spot two cock pheasants down by the gate, he can’t wait; his small hand grabs his mother’s and they’re off on a hunt, and find pheasants, swans, horses and boats – and chickens! We visit […]
October Banquet
Air and leaves are not yet crisp but dampened by drizzle. Still waiting for blustery autumnal air, the forest glimmers and jostles with lichens and leafy colour, glossy conkers, russet apples, bright red hips and haws: a fine October banquet for birds and squirrels. Kim M. Russell, 7th October 2019 My response to Imaginary Garden […]
On the Other Side of the River…
away from city sounds and lights a spectral owl waits for the untethering of the moon. Moored with the boats, she floats, horns above water, her light spilling into a river speckled with fishy stars, anticipating her ballooning release once inky darkness floods the city’s streets and bars, extinguishes the lights of buses and cars. […]
writing in north norfolk 