Although hares may be mad throughout March, in the sun and the heat they continue to spar. As they waltz, the fur flies from their swift fisticuffs, unable to resist a last box round the ears. Ring the Hill, Old Fat Bum, Stag of the Stubble, all are mad hares and ready for trouble. Kim […]
Tag: Meeting the Bar
Untying
1. we lived on earth as humble bards all scribbled lines and wine glass shards bitter taste, tattoos and scars of long-lost poems we used to write the ones that kept us up all night and never seemed to turn out right 2. we fumbled and began untying knots of words, and gave up trying […]
A Seuss Kind of Spring
In the first days of spring, when night’s frost melts in seconds, a heron streaks upstream, where the seed heads are darkened; they are weighted by rain as it drifts in a flurry, milky air lining grass blades. We are not in a hurry. We are dancing and singing on dew-pearly meadows and we’re waiting […]
Feet
The souls of soles, when bare, kiss earth, and sink into its vibrations. Shoes dull the senses, feet despair of boots and pumps, need sensations of soil and moisture, and the flow of air around each toe. Feet welcome liberation every summer; the change from bare white trotters to tanned exultation, collecting grains of sand […]
Circling
We circle each other,sun and moon, feelthe pull and pushof our magnetic fields.At different times of day,one of us yields or breaks away,planets or stars in our own right,creating our own light,halos of independence,before we collide,take up the danceagain, and we circle each other. Kim M. Russell, 24th March 2021 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Caught in the Headlights
In the sizzling silent dead of night, pain grips with talons, like an owl in the headlights with eyes of blood red. Snowy wings soar high towards the glimmer of dawn with an aching sigh. Pain rotates like an owl’s head caught in the headlights, talons and beak glisten red, cutting like scissors. I lie […]
No Swan Song
In my hollow bones, I feel this year will not be the final swan song. Though the waves come higher, and broken reeds are flung across uneven paths, our eyes are dazzled by birded fields and sun-flecked tides that yield the departure of winter. A verdant fern unfurls unseen beside a bubbling stream and something […]
An Audience of Ghosts
Stained glass in the ornate dome is splintered by a single ray of sun, forming ghosts in the hippodrome, derelict music hall of burlesque fun. The eerie spotlight pans a vacant stage, traces phantom footprints in the dust, picks out shambolic sheen of bygone age, theatrical fixtures gilded with rust. Vacant seats echo with silent […]
Opening Time
It’s raining old women and sticks; the lights are on, but the pub’s still closed. They’re gasping for pints and packets of crisps, squeezed tight together under the awning, from which fat globules of water drip, trickle off ends of unkempt hair and find their way past grimy collars. Between the telephone box and bike […]
Hagstone
Earth, wind, fire and water, each of them a divine daughter, waged a war on heaven and earth, so powerful that it gave birth to weather-witches, hags and crones, who traded in claws and bones, feathers, fangs, skulls and shells, to strengthen herbs and magic spells. Each bound to their own element, some witches crooned […]