When they emergefrom the water in their soggybathing costumes,their bodiesare like the landscape: dunes and waves, grit and pearls,sand and pebbles, seaside girlsin a rainbow of hues,reds, purples pinks and blues,shivering in the breeze. The lighthouse calls from granite rocks,a chalk stick tall and white,and they sing that songto a summer sky: “I wanna marry […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Solitude’s Promontory
A found poem uncovered in ‘The Art of Solitude: Buddhist Scholar and Teacher Stephen Batchelor on Contemplative Practice and Creativity’from Maria Popova’s The Marginalian Solitude is an art –we must learn to wait in acceptanceof a moment, of a piece of music, the polyphony of birds, the patter of rain. Alonebefore a sheet of paperor […]
Tree Moon Fox
Chilled to their inner ringsthey wait for spring, intimate winter trees, their unadorned birches, bare,skeletal white trunks shining, chilledfrom icy winds and frost-rilled. Under cover of night,there is white noise, rustle of leaves and distant hum of tyre on tarmac.Overhead the sky sparkles, incandescentwith a multitude of stars, distantand countless. Lying on her back, the […]
Desamor
Do you have the aguante, the heart to fully giveto another human being? You sense the friolento, the long-distance future,stretching to the horizon, and become a nagual, a holder of secretsand longing for what is beyond. And the cenzontle, a wise woman,whispers encouragement in your ear: ‘Keep at it’, she says, ‘don’t give up.’But you […]
Close Up with O’Keefe
How does a curvilinear,abstract frill wrap around a heart of patina,fungus-like, an organic shell? Observe how the primitive waves crash,preserving the pulsing pigment of Persian-red gouache;how the artist’s blood seeped into the underpainting. Kim M. Russell, 6th May 2025 It’s Tuesday Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub and our host is Melissa, with an ekphrastic […]
Mother
Until I rampaged into womanhoodand found myself adrift on the sea of life, you were a gorse bush flaming through my childhood,golden, scented with coconut, alive. You were my harbour when I shipwrecked motherhood,a beacon when relationships capsized. You encouraged me to be cautious in my adulthood,and always try to see through another’s eyes. Your […]
As a Child Listening to Ella Fitzgerald
Satin and velvet tonesbroke through the crackleof a seventy-eight on my parents’ turntable,crooning and scatting like a flock of birds.Ella’s voice, a warm hug, skippingthe melody or drawing out emotion like the dripping strand from a spoonof honey.She bent and spun songs I’d heard delivered straight on the radio, dry,gave them souls and made them […]
Fate
Am I a fool to want to float,to sail away on a leaky boat,exploring canals and rivers,trimming sails in squally weatheruntil I reach the estuaryand the freedom of the open sea?A mysterious cloud invokes my muse,questions the destiny I choose.What if I should lose my way?Then I will consult the sky: by dayI have the […]
no longer drifting
sculpted by salty waves and sandthe driftwood was almost out of reachon the dunes above the beachthrown high in a stormit had once been part of a living treetorn from itsrootsand manufactured into something practicallike a boat or a tableby the time it reached the shoreit was unrecognisabletwisted by the artifice of the ocean into […]
The Crone Can’t Spell Anymore
As a linguist and English teacher,and even before, as a learner,I never had problems spellingor remembering the meaningof…things. Entering my seventieth year,signs of ageing have appeared.I have begun to trip and stumble,words no longer tumblefrom my fingers. My handwriting’s scribble,as if a dyslexic spider resides in my pen.What I type isn’t what I see on […]
writing in north norfolk 