The alligator pear, or avocado,has a green, leathery rindand flesh that’s soft and blanduntil you add jalapeño,a handful of chopped tomato,and a squeeze of lime. Mash it with a fork,add a splash of tabascoand you will concurthat the avocadomay have skin like an alligator,but it’s sweet and creamy as a pear. Kim M. Russell, 14th […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Buckets
I would love to return to the seasideon a sixties time machine ride,where my sister and I used to playwith our plastic buckets and spades. I would feel the sand between my toes,watch the waves crash on the stones,and run down to the sea to fill my bucketwith water to pour in our sandcastle’s moat. […]
On reading Heaney’s ‘Gifts of Rain’
The recent rain has left puddles,cars shower walkers with chilly wavesand tractors churn up mud. Burst riverbanks leave us in a muddle,fields and gardens lost, animals to save,as we wrangle with the flood. On the other side of the world it’s dry,all moisture wrung out, no dripping taps,just an arid cough of dust. There’s not […]
Survivors in a Ruined City
We hide while bombs destroy our homes,mothers and children hunkeredin the dust of a city reduced to its bare bones. Men came, destroyed and, conscienceless,fled the scenes of devastation; they aregone while we survivors are hopeless, watching the afterbirth of jet contrailsstill fading in the silent sky.It will take years to clear the city of […]
Grief Crows
The last of the wildflowershas faded, the air is pregnant with the first breath of falling leaves, and long grass is meshed with violet splashes, commonknapweed on common ground. A glance overhead reveals something flapping, a black glove or a hand, waving, first oneand then another, keeping close, mime artists skittering – […]
Tureen
The tureen is porcelain and deepand filled with thick and creamy soup.The scent is spicy and aromatic,the colours vivid and chromatic,with orange carrot and butternut squash,silver onion, green celery, a red flashof chilli flakes in a constellation,and floating planets of crunchy crouton.The ladle sits in its shiny groove,waiting for one of us to make a […]
Cobwebs
Dewdrops stud the spiders’ threadsthat span the fence posts and the gate.Blowing in the autumn breeze, cobwebsdangle between trees, a trap for fallingleaves. Berries stud the spiders’ threadsthat hang from hedge and rowan tree,and woodland creatures make their beds,store nuts and fruit in preparation. Flocksof birds fly in migration, and the redsof leaves and berries […]
Winter Portents
By next door’s chicken coop, a fox ghosts pastand, bold with hunger, skims the fence posts,a sign of what is to come. Berries blob like blood on spruce and rowan,old wives’ tales of a turning season,another sign of what is to come. On the sill, in late sun, bask crisp wasp corpses,outside the window, a […]
The Old Vicarage Gardens
At the tipping point of summer,leaves have not yet turnedand, at the Old Vicarage Gardens,a riot of dahlias continues to burn,their vivid colours and spiky bloomsare not likely to fade too soon,unlike the fading dog day heat. Grass and bark paths yield to our feeton a quiet walk between trees and flowers,disturbed only by the […]
Fragile Bonds and Lipstick Smears
Deceived by a cancerous two-faced moon,I believed in the thickness of blood –until she broke the fragile bond of sisterhood. Nothing can stop these grief tides,the splash of sorrowand its constant ebb and flow. In the density of salt water,on the tempest of my grief,my heart is tossed like a leaf. With her glossy slick […]
writing in north norfolk 