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 […]

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. […]

Feline

Orbs of honeyed trustglow in the darknessat the end of the bed,incandescent torchessearching in the nightfor human heat.In the morning,after breakfast and a treat,blue-eyed companionrelinquished for the day,the owner of the amber eyesgoes out to hunt and play.   Kim M. Russell, 17th November 2020 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Tuesday Poetics: Look into […]