I am no gaunt, leafless winter hawthorn: my trunk is not gnarled nor are my branches a twisted mass, no dark hoard of barbs. I am not creamy froth on outgrown hedges, no early dog rose drenched in dew or sun. I dance and rustle with fallen leaves and glow with autumn fruit, nut and […]
Tag: Poetry Pantry
Refulgent
The sky is blasted with dragonish clouds that blacken an ancient wind-blustered landscape long ago weathered into ridge and furrow, dissolving the veil between human and nature, between yesterday and tomorrow. Murmurations of thunderheads gather, unearthly shapes shifting across the gorge where the sun god tempers day in his fiery forge; an alchemist, he chants […]
Magnificent for a Moment
You spent years underground, a larva, your skin brittle and papery, vulnerable you built your cocoon in darkness as black as your carapace. I found you that day, a jet flash in the May sun basking in the heat of urban concrete. I admired your gloss and spectacular size, a stag among beetles ready to […]
Capricious May
May is capricious, the garden is luscious, bathed in soft sun, daisy and dandelion- spattered. Sky turns bruised plum, sweetly congeals cloud jam, a chiff-chaff’s half-hearted call warning of imminent rainfall. Warning of imminent rainfall, a chiff-chaff’s half-hearted call sweetly congeals cloud jam. Sky turns bruised plum, spattered daisy and dandelion bathed in soft sun, […]
Layering
Spring has come in layers, from the first swallows of the year drawing fresh lines through still air and busily nesting in eaves, to carpets of flowers, fragments of sky among nettles and grass, and the honeyed murmur of bees. Kim M. Russell, 6th May 2018 A sunny Sunday morning has inspired this little poem […]
Lingering day…
is painted in pointillist shadows, light fades with the last echoes of birdsong and clings to moon and stars. Lingering day, when owls skim, swoop, dodge in and out of branches not yet embellished with blossom or leaves but pregnant with promise. Kim M. Russell, 29th April 2018 My response to The Poetry School […]
The Devil’s Among Us
‘But soon the devil’s among us flesh and fell’, taken from ‘The Ballad Of Villon And Fat Madge’ by François Villon Let us arise from our drunken pit and savour every element of spring: the burst of every flowering bud; the first silvery notes of mating birds; the drowsy hum of the first bumblebee – […]
A Poem for a Poet
The words that flow or inch their way from germ of thought to lips, to point of nib, or fingertips on keys, can only be caught if you set them free. They are yours to do with what you will. But when another speaks your words, awake or in the depths of sleep, or writes […]
Paradox of Absolutes
How can we grasp reality without images and parables? We live by laws of nature and sing our hymns of praise; reach for heaven and find infinity and flux, children fishing for stars in oceans. Like stars we return to dust, guide others to join up the dots, to understand the paradox between belief and […]
Newborn
The waiting was breath held underwater, the longing was a crushing ocean wave, and the scalpel cut was the sharpness of moonlight at the end of a stormy day. Now his smile carves deep into my ribcage, his fingers worm paths under my skin, and the smell of his head is fresh-baked bread that I […]