This dream is a moon-faced owl shining brightly in a silver tree, its amber orbs cups of honey that drip sweetly in a sleeper’s eye. This dream is a rasping call that echoes through windy branches, the spiky tip of a nightmare’s tail brushing against a windowpane illuminated with star-fall – before it flicks and […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
What She Told Her
She always knew the little dark-haired, brown-eyed child was her mother’s secret. She’d kept the outings in a stranger’s car, ice creams at the airport and seaside trips close to her chest, being only five or six, and loving mystery. When the baby arrived, nobody said a word. There were whispers behind closed doors. The […]
Wonderful Alien
Wide-eyed and full of wonder, you hold my hand and guide me through your world. I can only blunder, an ancient alien who has lived here too long to appreciate a single leaf, a muddy pebble or the sun on water. Now I have your eyes to discover the beautiful among the fearful, forget for […]
Enigma
We need iron in our blood to carry oxygen from lungs to cells, and yet iron left in damp air will rust and its shiny grey will crust with red. The earth is rich and hard with iron, mined for making steel, its solidity tempered and twisted into buildings, pylons and bridges, and its smoothness […]
New Day Dawning
Eerie moonlight lingers among broken trees and last night’s feathered singers’ dwindling melodies descend into kaleidoscopic dreams, leak into pointillistic skyscapes of fading stars, scattering promises of dew and dawn and the breath of a brand-new day. Kim M. Russell, 17th December 2019 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: New Year – New World […]
Echoes of Christmas
Suspended on the air, the tang of dead leaves, breath of wood smoke, tingle of frost and echoes in twilight. A full moon, pearly white touches reflections splintering the night, tinged with bright Christmas lights. Twinkling headlights, streetlight’s glow, and intimate lamp-lit windows remind us that now it’s time to go home. In the darkening […]
Of Clouds and Sea
No sky’s completely cloudless, there are clouds we cannot see, tiny breathless drops of hope above a hopeless sea. Although we know it’s boundless, and its waves forever restless, human beings can be feckless in the ocean’s cold embrace, and our bodies spiral, weightless, to the bottom of the sea. But our atoms, although formless, […]
Nettles
We are not subtle, although we blend, green in the midst of green, our sting, our poison bating our green breath with not a quiver. Hiding in the green, we remain unseen, waiting pungently for a patch of skin a recipient for our histamine; we long to puncture a scarlet tattoo, stinging souvenirs. Our hairy, […]
Sharp Teeth
I grew up to the sound- track of waves all around this tiny little island where trees offer cool shade and fruit of the brightest colours the one setback was the sharks that lurked in the water and fed on my family bled it dry drop by drop until it was just me in the […]
Early Morning Visit from the Owl
In the early hours of morning, my heart swooped from birch to willow when an owl called at the window, a fluty, chilly shiver. Through the tilted slats of the blind, the honeyed amber flash of eyes and fluttering ‘You-ooh-ooh’ drew me to the frost-kissed pane, froze my breath in a cloud of ‘Oh!’ as […]
writing in north norfolk 