‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’, from Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes. Pebbles slip and roll beneath our soleson the slope down to the ebb and swell. Suddenly it erupts from the shingle beach,a sculpture, two halves of a broken shell like hands extended to a passing gullor a cloud, one half upright, the […]
Tag: Open Link Night
My Precious
High in the dark dome, you,my late-flowering moon, becomea fully bloomed pearl, tattooedwith gossamer veins. Below,grey and white houses tumbledown the valley, spangledfor a moment by the light, untilyou are hidden by cloud,wrapped in crushed velvet.Our monthly tryst is over now;I watch you sink, heavy and slowoutside my lonely window.Come back soon,my precious moon. Kim […]
The Perfume of Peonies
She raises the pink peonies, cool,damp leaves and petals a balmto her industrious fingers. Those dual-headed, blowsy globes grasped in her palmexude a fruity wisp of sweetnessthat makes her life much easier to bear.No customers notice the neatnessof her blouse, the pretty headscarf that she wearsto cover the cuts and bruises of her husband’s violence.She […]
No Words
There is no such thing as completesilence. Just no spoken words.There is the muffled pad of socked feetacross the kitchen floor; the clock’s ticktock; the soft and loud song of birds;wind in trees and the creak of a branch;the hum of bees and distant traffic;white noise in the middle of the night;the low rumble of […]
Medusa at the Supermarket
A hiss of hairuncoilsas I avert my stare,lowering turquoiseeyelids, mascaracoated lashes brushingmy pale powdered skin.I’m in the fruit section;with one hand I caressa pomegranate,with the other I pushback the stray curl.A couple and their little girlknock me with a trolley, unawareof me standing there,the darkest sunglasses pushedback on my head. I peerat their shopping, turn […]
Albatross
It’s a ghost in the night that keeps me awakewith whispering, muttering, sighing,and nudges in my poetic ribs.It pokes me with imageryand ties me up in allegoryuntil I reach for notebook and pen. It’s a ghost in the early morning, a wispof verse draped across my aching neck,a metaphoric albatrosschecking rhymes, ensuringenjambment and caesura makesense, […]
An ocean
is a torrent of turbulent tidesebbing and retreating its voice flows and scatters widesometimes gently whispering often wind-blasted and cruelembodying creatures living in its sunless depths some bright as jewelsothers as mysterious as something on a planet orbiting the dark reachesof space devoid of wind rain and sun on earth oceans crash on beachesas they […]
Gannet
Amid the balmy, briny breath,the whiff of wind-worn rockand washed-up bladderwrack, a great white birdemerges from the ocean. It’s a pterodactyl-like contraptionof hollow bones and feathers, buffetedby the coming storm. Puppeted, the gannet freezesmid-flight, a scribble torn between fantastic nacreous cloudsand foaming green waves,trapped in the anticipation of an early sea grave. Kim M. Russell, […]
View from the Ochre Room
In his studio in the asylum at Saint Remy,the artist sets up his easel, takes a sheetof paper the size of a street poster (maybeit was once a poster), and attaches it,smooths it flat, arranges chalks, oils,watercolours and brushes.He chooses carefully, black chalkto sketch the window, a little off-centre.Light passes through the glass of jars,bottles […]
Just Saying
It’s not just a cup of tea,it’s fragrant steamfrom a porcelain bowl,leaves inside blossoming outside. It’s not just a breath of air,it’s hundreds of yearsof leaves and latewood,Earth’s redemption. It’s not just the sea,it’s immeasurable depthsand creatures as mysteriousas aliens somewhere in space. It’s not just poetry,it’s time scrunched into a balland smoothed out again,words […]
writing in north norfolk 