When all wildlife is depletedand we are left to scrabbleamong limy rocks and burnt-outshrubs and copses, and rowthe marshland for sustenance,we may be rewardedwith a universe of daisiesto remind us of the past:the gathering of carrotsand merrymaking,all before facingthe death of the old year,the passing of the old life,the cold ash of isolation. Kim M. […]
Tag: Weekly challenge
Invocation to the Wise Women
Misunderstood throughout history,tortured, drowned and burnt at the stake,you scrutinise Trumpian mockeryamid the terrible intensityof wildfires, plague and death,and all their haunted weirdness. You have seen us at our worst;this wicked summer we have seen it too,and we rue our inaction in the face of doom. Forget the shaman, Chiron and Mentor,all male, all muscle-bound […]
Do you name your trees?
Late afternoon sunlight blinkslike my gold molar when I laugh. It jokes among the honeysuckle leavesthat hug the cherry tree. They are mapped with age spots and veins,frustrated at their fading. On the third shelf up,surrounded by fiction books and poetry, the photograph of my mother as a little girlstares from a frame made of […]
Sudden Joy
The bay tree’s gone,chopped to let the sunlight in,but fighting back with fresh shootsand a surprisefluorescent yellow evening primrosegrowing at its roots. Yesterday, I walked in places new,soaked my idle boots in dewdodged overhanging branchesand brambles still heavy with plump fruit,past haystacks, across recently ploughed fieldsto sudden joy – a crop of […]
Lazarus
Mynamecrumblesfrom my mouth,a piece of coral. You might think I’m smiling but it’s rictus –I’m as terrified of youas you are of me. If you could seeinto my spine,you’d find it’s hollow,encased in an armoury of external teeth –all the better to eat – and my eyes are even bigger than my mouth –all the […]
Rainbow Child
The humid heat had spread like crude oil on a seashore; it prickled and burned skin red, thick and sticky in every pore. A parasol and paddling pool were perfect for the chore of cooling and amusing you: buckets of water, nothing more. Sudden storm clouds above the trees gathered with a growl of thunder, […]
This Green and Pleasant Land
So many shades of green, with brown and ochre in between, and flowers sewing up the edges with wild brambles and tidy hedges. I often long for higher hills, a mountain would be better still, but this flat landscape stretches wide, and touches an enormous sky on a horizon laced by wind-sculpted trees that dips […]
Strange Weekend
Saturday was my first outing, all masked up and nowhere to go but the supermarket, strolling with my basket, calm and clean, with civilised social distancing in wide aisles, touching the inhaler in my pocket, no panic, no fear, husband always near. The Sunday walk was leisurely, a lot of heat but a little breezy, […]
A Metaphor Senryu
in love and conflict edit the mood with rhythm and punctuation Kim M. Russell, 29th July 2020 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings #30: Writing as a Metaphor for Living This Wednesday, Magaly is hosting from New York, where things are hot, hoping we are ready to play with cool words. For […]
Avalon
If only I could float through the mists of time in Morgana’s enchanted boat, to the island of the apples, that fertile fortunate isle that is leaf and sunlight dappled: the place where Excalibur was made and Arthur was laid to rest, with nine queens to watch over him. I imagine how I’d find the […]
writing in north norfolk 