It starts with a perfect drop of rain falling from a cloud – and the future arrives just as water, rippling the stillness of a pond, releasing mayflies, dragonflies, and herons that flap their wings like broken umbrellas against spring rain. The gorged river glints, powerful and steadfast on its intrepid journey to the coast, […]
Tag: Poets United
The Moment When You Realise
You have been a familiar landscape to yourself, all these years of seeing your reflection in mirrors, shop windows, the still surface of a pond. You thought you knew the prospect of your frown, the parallel lines of your smile and the curves of your hills and valleys. Until one day, at a family gathering, […]
Metamorphosis
early morning snow landing on a fresh white page robins track haiku Kim M. Russell, 5th December 2019 My response to Poets United Midweek Motif: Changes Susan and Sumana bring us the aroma of change this midweek, with the sad news of their departure as hosts on 18th December. They have shared poems by Rilke, […]
Snake in the Grass
It is a grass snake. It is curled in autumn leaves. It is autumn leaves. In it is a curled grass snake. A curled autumn snake? Is it? It is leaves in grass! It is curled in grass. It is a snake autumn leaves. Curled leaves in grass. It is a snake. It is autumn. […]
Cinnamon (for Adelheid)
Different café, another time, a seat by a steamy window, hot chocolate with cinnamon, and I’m sitting opposite her, the last time we met, before I left and we never saw each other again. I was naïve, excited, eager to explore, and she was so much older, teacher and mentor. She encouraged me to fly, […]
Gentle Winter Reminder
Snow has been falling for half an hour and already the garden is covered with white. Slumped by the log store, only the tip of an old sack is visible as I approach, feet firmly in my wellies, one sock creeping down to my toes. The logs are frozen to the touch, landing in the […]
At the crossroads of summer and autumn
between passing moons even the fish are waiting in cricket silence between passing moons constellations are clearer cosmic dot-to-dots even the fish are waiting beneath frosted leaves the pond hesitates in cricket silence autumn performs her striptease distant thunderclap Kim M. Russell, 9th November 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1777 Classical and non-classical in […]
The Authenticity of Autumn
Woodland paths glimmer in the breath of dawn and shadows withdraw, musky miasmas of mulch. Leaves spin, dizzy helicopters, colours bright as fire, until they land in a dog-pile and rot underfoot. Wracked with weather scars, ancient trees slow, branch and root, their fissures adorned with fungus and spiralling mushrooms of sulphurous yellow, orange and […]
Beauty Beyond the Grave
The shadow of laudanum no longer stained her skin, in life and death her beauty spilled luminous, and green-blue eyes belied disease that once coiled within. Her glorious red hair had grown beyond eternal sleep, entangled in it, Rossetti’s book of poetry, penetrated by a single worm where damp and mould had seeped. Seven long […]
Flipped
It was a raging sea-magic kind of day, with thunder clouds and wind-whipped waves that made us mermaids forget salty witches. Oblivious to consequence, caught up in the rumpus, we anticipated handsome seamen snatched by squalls from a schooner’s deck, combed out the tangles in our waist-length hair and spread our glistening fish-tails on a […]
writing in north norfolk 