Fantasies make their own body heat; warm air under their fluffed feathersprotects them from all kinds of weather,and it’s a cosy place to tuck their beaks. A build-up of fat under the epidermis is like fantastic thermal underwear; they can sit out long Antarctic winters or soar above the Himalayas. You might think that fantasies’ […]
Tag: Open Link Weekend
It’s all Rubbish
I walk along flowering lanes flanked by hawthorn and gorse, and a car roars by at break-neck speed leaving a cloud of exhaust, and in the ditch they’ve chucked a pile of cigarette butts and, even worse, the remains of fast-food breakfast, plastic packaging and a dirty nappy; obviously, the child’s meal with plastic toy didn’t […]
I stick these pages together with blue
The blue-tack tucked in the side of the drawer reminds me of days when I listened to your voice non-stop. My younger self wrote your lyrics with a blue ink italic calligraphy pen on index cards; I even copied artwork from album sleeves, shaded in with rainbow-coloured pencils. Leaves unfurled and fell with your smoky […]
Joining the Dots
Like a child with an activity book, I join up the dots, spy with my little eye pictures in earth and sky, from horizon to horizon: the shapes of flocks of birds, clouds and the occasional rainbow – which must be coloured in. We are joined by bone […]
This Snow
This mid-January morningall the blemishes are coveredand soil scars have been stitchedby the dusty blackbird’s tracks. Even the washing looks whiter,not frozen stiff, but dancing, blownby the wind that brought the snow. Kim M. Russell, 16th January 2021 A chilly little poem for earthweal open link weekend #53
On the Fourth Anniversary of Your Death
Like the sky maps sketchedin the bird brains of the geeseflying overhead this morningin their flocks and vees,your gentle face is etchedinto my genealogy.I hear their honk and chatterloud and clear; they fly byas if it doesn’t matterthat a day cannot be erasedby hoar frost. Yes, it’s here again,sparkling like it did four years ago,stiffening […]
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 […]
What happened to the freedom of the sky?
I’m happy to have another poem in this month’s Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words, Volume 8, Chapter 1, for which the image is an unusual one, a cartoon by John Samuel Pughe/Library of Congress. As ever, I’m in good company with Misky, Anmol and Kerfe, to name a few. Why not read […]
This Summer
I watched the movie of this summerfrom inside, shielded from the unrealityof vacant sunny days, no traffic noise,a drought of touch and laughter. I lived each day in the now,no plans for the after,uncertain if there would be any kind of future. And now, at the tail end of this summer,rain-diamonds decorate the windowpane,mornings are […]
Armageddon Revisited
The man said global warming was fake news,a conspiracy, a feeble attempt to screwa thriving economy. The man said it was fine to own a rifle or handgun,as long as it was just for fun, to carry onhunting without a care. The man said he needed more electricity,forget turbines, solar panels and the sea,go nuclear. […]
writing in north norfolk 