UNITED KINGDOM

Editor of Poetry Life & Times:
http://chicago.funcity.org/~cafe-po/current.html

pinky@redcity.demon.co.uk

THE BURNING BUSH


Touch me
I am the burning bush
the warm earth, the blind wanton
the place of life's beginnings
music under the maestro's stroking hands.

Discover me
I am the deep orchid
a well of peace, a spring of desire
mistress of all-or-nothing
fire under the searing breath of love.

(Published / Pinky's Little Book of Shadows, 2000
Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press, CD ROM)

© Sara L. Russell, 1997.

THE ARRANGED MARRIAGE (sonnet)

My love lies on the border of dream sleep
Bright vistas burn behind his shuttered eyes;
His skin perfumed with nard and jasmine, deep
Warm sandalwood, and breath of honeyed sighs.
His hair, like night-black curves of moonlit streams
Lies over virgin linen, round his face,
His golden shoulders quiver as he dreams
His legs resting as if in flight or chase.
Here I could die of longing for this skin,
These hands lying half-spread, like open wings,
These petal lips, the voice they hide within,
Our secret sharing of unspoken things.
Such sweet treasures will grace this life no more;
Now love is harvested and spoken-for.

© Sara L. Russell, 27th Aug. 2001
Revised 26th Jan. 2002.

WELL-WISHING (For Debbie)

I'm thinking of you today.

You and I feeding the rabbits
behind your house
gathering dandelion and dock leaves on the
windy, flat common in Essex.

You had a space hopper
roller skates and a pogo stick.
some made me fall off, but the pogo stick was easy.
your sisters were running everywhere
we were looking more like sisters
than my sister and I, or your sisters and you
both with brown hair
brown eyes
almost the same smile.

In photographs, you
were always a blur, on the move,
hating to be photographed,
transient as air, a blur of hair
and moving arms, a picture
of shyness wanting to be somewhere else.

There were the cats, the rabbits,
long summers, vast flat grasslands
dock and dandelion, clover
and buttercups spilling over the ditches,
butterflies riding the wind
children riding spacehoppers, roller skates
and dream ships forever.
Forever meant forever then;
nothing would ever change,
we would never get older,
there was never danger.

I'm thinking of you today.
Please get well soon.

© Sara L. Russell, 9th Dec. 2000.

© All Copyright, Sara Russell.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.