‘For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’ Wallace Stevens It started with a silent flake, a branched crystal, not unlike a flower or a tree, or the paper doily cut-outs grandma used to make. It started with a snowflake, but […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
I am grey
shadows in snowy woods facets of crisp ice the flit of invisible birds smoke and skeletal trees against ashen skies the light that draws a thin line across the horizon the gentle grey of a heron Kim M. Russell, 16th February 2021 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: True Colours? Mish is back for […]
Dewy Mushrooms
A dewy forest of moons,a multitude of mushrooms,soaks in the weight of dawn. It’s snowing spore confetti,cheerful colour splashes:crimson, ochre, cream and rust. Puffballs and parasols,ink caps and champignons,frilly-gilled and plump of flesh, a festival of fungi sprouting earthy fresh. Kim M. Russell, 9th February 2021 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Let’s have […]
Reheating a Cold War
Red geraniums rust in September rain and sparrows splash in puddles again. In summer’s hinterland, something is stirring leaves already yellow, their weariness showing, tattered and brittle, counting years with their falling. But still trees find safety in numbers, flourishing in ancient copses, forests and woods, growing together for the common good while men train […]
Sad Song
“The clear vowels rise like balloons” S.Plath ~ Morning Song A favourite song floats into the mind on a passing whimsical wind, prompted by a blackbird’s incidental trill or the postman’s whistle, and I am there again, mouth wide open, lungs bursting with the thrill, in a crowd of hearts beating to the same rhythm […]
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 is not a carved box
but the heart of a treea remnant of mean accumulation of scentsthe essence of adolescenceand early adulthooda repository for bad and gooddifferent lives and different timesan amalgam of stories and rhymes Kim M. Russell, 12th January 2021 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Object Poems Mish is back to host this Tuesday’s Poetics with […]
In conversation with the aged librarian
Sonnets echo through the shelves of the library, disturbing ancient dust and ghosts of poets lost, to keep you company, stir your memory, protect your heart and soul from time’s frost. Among your books, you are never alone, with full moon or candle to shed light. Besides, heart-learnt words in blood and bone blossom into […]
Sugar Daddy Revisited
Daddy,you have eaten all the sugar,left me hungry and bleeding,a blistered foot without a shoe;you know I must killand sculpture youas a marble statue,bastard, you. Thou wast my universe, my cosmic mistress;if I had known thy crazed intentto render me in alabaster, a lifelesslump of death,I should have beggedfor one last breath. His breathless body […]
Awakened by the Thaw
‘To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night’ (Gilbran) A heart stony with winter’s chill,and starved from arteries frozen still,needs gradual and gentle thawthat penetrates the very core.When temperatures start to climbafter months of deepest wintertime,shaking itself with a timid shiver,the heart becomes a singing river. Kim M. […]
