Kölle Alaaf! I miss the echo in the streets, the crowds on Rudolfplatz and Neumarkt, the oompa pa of familiar Fastelovend songs and cries of ‘Kamelle!’ as sweets hailed down. You helped me dress up as a clown. I drank cold Kölsch, ate salty Pommes mit Mayonnais’. You taught me the words to ‘Mer losse […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Time to Turn (a Quadrille)
Osier wands planted in November are almost trees. Now’s the time when we remember to pluck a switch or three of willow, white with soft, sleek buds, gold with catkins, sweet temptation to hungry humming bees, still drowsy and crawling from their winter sleep. Kim M. Russell, 6th March 2019 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Progress Forgiven
I forgive pylons that march across fields where once glaciers sculpted valleys, horses plodded down stone-walled lanes and everything travelled by hoof and foot. I forgive the engines that puffed their smoke into the heaviness of time with dark intention and a constant soundtrack of stridulation against a sky the colour of congealed blood. I […]
The Privilege of Green
Once I walked among dusty cars, along crowded streets, hemmed in by buildings and a depression of sky. I had the freedom, the privilege to choose green. Fields, trees and lush leaves are all that crowd me now, and the sky, although not green, stretches its hugeness to infinity. Kim M. Russell, 18th February 2019 […]
Nature’s Game
She lurks in the shadows, her grey-brown trunk short, furrowed and corky, long branches pointy winter wands, charming icicles, writing spells with frost and disappearing into mist. She has already drawn the path of winter’s exile in her elder scrolls, plotted the return of spring with a joyful blossom blast: choirs of birds and drone […]
Unseen
I no longer need to hide in doorways and shadows – I’m one of the unseen. I’m a tatty pigeon faltering on feathers of memories. I’m a twisted old silver birch, invisible in moonlight. I’m a river with no audible ripple, grown lumpen and tufty, dried to a trickle and a tangle of reeds. I […]
Like Marilyn
In those old photographs, I see a teenager, pale and lacking confidence, happy to allow mother or sister-in-law to take over for a while, united in womanhood, your blonde hair curled around your face, like Marilyn’s. I arrived too soon. The sparkle of the glamorous life you hoped for faded into monochrome. You grew up […]
Unfettered
Snowdrops bring (de) light to the darkest, coldest months of winter: one day, tentatively poking green heads through hard soil; the next, trickling into a snowdrift of white flowers, gentle harbingers of unfettered reproduction and the joyous riot of spring. Kim M. Russell, 29th January 2019 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Harbinger, also […]
Tumbledown Shed
Weighted with ivy, tessellated with lichen and moss, the roof has splintered and caved in. Perhaps something has settled among the long-forgotten tools and pots – now homes for mice and spiders. Our sentinel by the rickety gate sheds flakes of peeling paint. The padlock key is long gone and its treasures remain hidden. Kim […]
Shedding Skin
The first time I shed skin, my tongue probed the blade of a new language, tasted unfamiliar vowels and consonants, bled new words and poems. The second time I shed skin, the words were mine but the tune was new, lilting and green. The last time I shed skin, the landscape taught me everything I […]
