While winter writes love notes,we hunker down in a world of white. Instead of flowers,storms bring ice in fists. Love can be a monster,scribbled poems in the margins of a frozen puddle,or on an uncrushed flower, yearning to burst into constellationsand dance in green shafts of spring again. Kim M. Russell, 14th January 2025 Image […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Wordstone
I’m not a light-footed scampereron windswept beaches, however I’m like a ruddy turnstone, my ageingskin freckled and pebbled, turning words like stones and discoveringthe nourishment that I’m seeking: words and phrases, deep as the sea;a pile of eureka poems to satisfy me. Kim M. Russell, 7th January 2024 Ruddy turnstone, photographed by Michael Sammut For […]
Latewood
Swaddles of mistinhabit the darkeningbetween trees.Despite the formingof the darker partsof annual growth rings,still there is a green silence,broken only by the beating of wings,the occasional cracking twig,and the seasonal frostingof branches and the grassbeneath my feet.Notwithstanding the ache for spring,I’m listening yet. Kim M. Russell, 10th December 2024 Image by Drazen Nesic on Unsplash […]
Alien Poets
We dance with the universe,where planets cross paths, orbit each other, and regularly alignwith meteor tales and imagistic showers. We are light wavesand white noise coming together in poetic symphony. With long-handled spoonswe stir stars until they swirl, then dwindle, open a crack in the universe,a swathe of galaxies, nanoscopic sequins on the scarf […]
Last of the Undersea Dragons
The sea is replete with the briny tears I’ve shed,which pour from my cave on the ocean bed. I’m bound with pungent seaweed like manaclesand studded with tenacious barnacles. When thunderstorms set the waves a-rocking,I rise to the surface, where fork lightning illuminates my scales of bladder wrack greenand coral pink – however they’re never […]
Nature’s Not So Well Kept Secret
Behind brief, flickering shadows,the invisible bones of nature glow. Autumn sun burnishes leaves,like gun smoke their incense breathes. For centuries men have used their mindsto construct walls of different kinds to repel enemies and protecttheir property, kin and the rich select. But nature has a single secret,one she’s never very well kept: winter threatens humans […]
Joy of Words
I find joy in words,in their different combinations:the way they flock like birdsor break off into sentences;their meanings and suggestions,their gathering in poems, songs,and stories of reality or fiction. I find joy in peace and quiet,time alone to read and write,let imagination and words run riot,to play with rhythms and rhymes,travel in space and time,revisit […]
Strangely Muffled
Strangely muffledby winter weather,the world is quieted:trees loom behind thick fog;there are no footstepsand footprints disappearbeneath frost and snow – mind how you go! Strangely muffledby mountains of dust,as if a desert was emptiedover the planet,only the top branchesof dead trees can be seen;animals and humans wade through detritus. Strangely muffledby heat and thick smoke,the […]
Lady with a Parrot
Her life is mirrored in the bird:grey with a touch of crimsonin the parrot’s crest and feather tips,and her unsmiling lips. Red’s lucky for some,but she is a captive,tamed and longing to flybeyond blue curtains to sky and leaves, green as the bowl,from which she sips her tea,and green as her envyof the parrot’s wings. […]
Self Portrait with Clouds
I’d heard the voice but never seen its owner,loved the songs but never seen her face,but then I found her self-portrait on a coverwith the words; inside the music and her voice. It was the first time I’d ever seen a portraitor even a painting on a record sleeve;now there was a blonde woman’s blue-eyed […]