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 […]
Tag: Meeting the Bar
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 […]
Year’s End
The initial blast of snow that would only last an hour or so – was it a figment of the fearful mind or a tentative reminder of the rapid passing of Time? I imagine the Old Man sifting moments at his desk; the book of life opens itself and he sets about drafting the rest […]
Joni’s Colours
I listen to her voice paint a light and rainbow coloured folk song about a child whose eyes were bright but would never see, of crayons, trees and love. The colours flow through a Chelsea morning, with crimson beads and yellow curtains and a taxi, as if she’s singing just for me. A little green […]