Yellow catkins drip from grey willow, catch early morning light through mist. Another season dwindles like smoke or ghosts of long-lost family and friends, and drifts away with my self-worth, my memory, the agility of mind and body. Yet I am are still learning, in my nostalgic yearning, to become untethered like a boat and […]
Tag: Tuesday Platform
Getting Wild with Crows
I want to strut with crows, stomp and kick the rows of neatly turned furrows in a field freshly harrowed. I want to scribble and scrawl on geometric shapes with crayons of ploughed-brown, corn-green and yellow oil-seed rape. Bring on the vivid hues so we can fly among the blues and splash inky shadows on […]
Binding with Briars
I bind you with a hedge of spiteful briars from the ensorcelled heart of a midnight forest, a rose hidden from men’s desires for a hundred years incanted in a white-hot rage of Beltaine blossom on a thorny cage. Young men will come to press their suit; I’ll pluck and spear their ripened fruit, stick […]
Self-portrait in front of a misty mirror
The glass is cold to touch, fogged up with early morning bathroom steam. A drop of condensation rolls from top to bottom, clearing worm-holes where pupil matches pupil. Nose as close as glass allows before my breath steams up the gap, I see her eye, the cerulean I would drown in as a child, the […]
This fine city…
fits like a comfortable pair of shoes. I wander meandering alleys of what was once England’s second largest city, flanked by half-timbered shops and houses, from Tombland to the market place. I totter sea-sick among neat rows of sweet-wrapper stalls, up ancient steps to the bookends of castle and cathedral; along the river, where boats […]
A Bunch of Sunshine
You can keep your bouquets of pungent lilies and blushing roses, cultivated beauty intertwined. What I would like is delicate frills, the brilliance of daffodils: a natural bunch of sunshine. Their trumpets trill the breath of spring, their breeze-swept petals fluttering, their yellow flowers are a welcome sign of the end of wintry blasts, warmer […]
Prodigal Soul
Life had become a no-man’s land bristling with blackened stumps and fallen trunks, an ancient bog where once a forest grew – until the fog of despair doused the light that had burned strong and bright, destroyed by passion out of control. Shrouded peat was pocked with charcoal and twisted roots eroded toxic soil. Between […]
Sculpting the Coastline Together Again
My fingers itch as I watch clouds racing across a bracing sky. Wind wrestles everything into flux, bowls waves against an unforgiving fractured coast. Sea booms and boasts, spits salty spray, whips hair, seaweed and marram into a melee. My hands tingle with a defiant energy, gather crumbs of cliff and tumbled rocks, melt them […]
Concepts and Metaphors
Under an overflowing ashtray sky, the train stops. Frost seethes on scrubby sidings, where naked trees stretch pale, angular limbs. The engine rumbles and we’re gliding towards the tunnel of night, on tracks lit up with winter aconite. Kim M, Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Finding \Emotions and Concepts in Things, […]
No Alcohol Required
I get drunk on poetry and music, no alcohol required. You can keep your wine and beer; I love the cool, clear trickle of unadulterated nectar, must of grape and amber glow of apple and pear. No acidic burn of embarrassment, no hang- over, no regrets. I can still laugh at cheesy jokes, sing along […]
writing in north norfolk 