I have heard songbirds’ over- lapping whistles, the whisper of sparrow wings wheeling on the breeze, raindrops bouncing off dusty autumn paths, and the rattling somersaults of the last leaves from trees. I’ve listened to the sun sizzle into evening, bats flicker in cooling twilight air, snowflakes kissing a frozen window- pane, a cat purring […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
A Question of Tears
‘From where does the thundercloud come with its black sacks of tears?’- Neruda Black sacks of tears arrived on my doorstep today; I thought they’d been delivered by the coalman, until I opened them, and some teardrops got away, attaching themselves to leaves and gutters, dripping on my shoulder, soaking my jacket like a sobbing […]
Portrait in Chalk and Charcoal
He leans into the pavement, close enough to kiss the cold hardness of it, squinting through a dusting of charcoal. There’s a smear on his cheek that points to his ear, red with cold. He has coalminer’s fingers and a cough that rattles his ribs. The jacket across his shoulders has seen better days, but […]
Making Pastry
Oh, the anticipation and the reality of warm-kitchen days when hands touched over a huge bowl or fingers gripped together round a wooden spoon in snowstorms of flour and avalanches of butter eggs and sugar both tied up in aprons red-cheeked and bright-eyed mixing and stirring – baking and burning pies and tarts to tempt […]
Kafka’s Cage
“I am a cage, in search of a bird” – from The Blue Octavo Notebooks Emptiness echoes off my pretty bars, as polished and shiny as they are and, every day when you pass by, you will hear me heave a sigh. I am a cage trapped here below, gazing into an expanse of blue, […]
Waiting for Sleep to Come
Each night I walk observing graves tended and untended, order and disorder. My head- stone is blotched with moss and lichen, my brief story blotted out. I shimmer in the silver moon- light, skim long grass and weeds dusted with dandelion and thistle seeds between lych gate and porch, where closely-mown grass scorched over summer. […]
Bird Brain
Her brain is a riot of knapweed on which twittering finches feed, keeping her awake at night and drowning out each thought when she rises. She longs to see a chestnut or a walnut tree with broad crown and dangling fruit, or bushes of plump blackberries, but she cannot leave these walls, cannot stretch her […]
Easter at the Salt Marsh
Pale rays of sea aster and heads of lavender smear the salt marsh mauve and purple, a wave of Easter colour, pungent with a salty, muddy scent. Seaside spirits sing a hymn, a cheerful noise, a chink of halyards and a flap of sails, wind, waves and distant whales. Kim M. Russell, 3rd September 2019 […]
Looming
This year, high summer has cast a tidal wave of rhetorical bullshit. We swim in an ocean of it. It’s smeared over every beach, masking the sweet scent of sunscreen with its bitter stink until nothing’s left of August’s decadence. Sunny holidays disappear into autumn shadows, night falls far too soon, and the stench of […]
Bodies
Our bodies unfurl and then curl into each other under night’s cover. We are waves in motion on an inky ocean or sand-blown stones hidden in a desert’s undertones. We are intertwined limbs, hearts, souls and minds, dancing in the dark until we spark – stars falling in the empty sky of morning. Kim M. […]
writing in north norfolk 