In Lanjaron, Andalusia

In Lanjaron    a widow's honey shop

just as Max from Loubressac described

French peasant's fires

three sticks   

            feeding a frugal mound of ash

not Saxon style   

                    but in the style of the Lot

careful smolders   

stone chilled air   

wiping snot

modern Mason jars for honey

seemed out of place

where she sat 

conversing with portraits on the wall

father and son

           beneath whose portraits we posed

while she incanted Spanish prayers

to those she said    

                 were watching from above

atop the stairs  to Heaven 

where they beckoned her to come

leave her honey from the vega   

                                    our stares

of disbelief

then she took our money

© Dick Russell, 2013

         Walk Aware

           A Poem for January 

              Walking frost covered faded grass
              listening to ravens talking
              conjuring his own fragmented images
              into a schema that portrayed his soul
              he walked past beauty as a scholar might
              debating the state of a man who walks
              insulated from the electric earth
              by shoes that erase the ground's contours

              Above    an orbiting information satellite
              shining like a comet in free-fall space
              over a third of the earth its signals traced
              an intricate web of bat-pitched noise

              Not watching    he fell    laughed to hear the grass
              splinter    crackle in his ear     like static




              © Dick Russell, 2013
              first published in Chapman 39, 1984; Edinburgh
              Editor Joy Hendry

Death is just a crook

When sleepless I composed these lines of verse in my head  

            as if playing chess pieces blind

carefully moving words   no phrase too terse

to check the flow   like paring apple rind

in a curling helix-like state of mind

time like a spring

compresses dreams in plaited strands that bind

to positions played long ago   ticking

into eternity   self to play thus going

on

awake I review these lines and try

to plumb those pools of reverie I fished

with barbless hooks that caught not what I wished

but snagged seaweed in my subconscious mind

detritus of times forgotten times missed

when brash and bold once long ago   unkind           

memories from long ago flicker in my mind

Coffee’d   pick up the threads of life

the mind must clear   must curl up in its nook

to comprehend in absences mistook

more often than silence is   as meaningful

that life plays to win   death is just a crook

in the road   seen moves ahead by careful

players who know a void is a void is annul

© Dick Russell, 2013

      What I Liked About Rex

      He devised the airlift that fed Berlin  

      There’s now a street   Rex Waite Straße  in his honor  

      Wing Commander Reginald Waite

      What I liked about Rex was his quiet manner

      his interest in archeology

      he’d flown biplanes over Mesopotamia

      over England’s shires

      noting old pathways

      meandering routes unseen at ground level

      how such paths came together
      at places often sacred

                         places once pagan 

      but whatever culture's there

      still performs its rites

      Rex had an ease with authority about him

      as when he got me to help him

      re-install wooden shutters

      one fine late Autumn day

      shutters that winterized French windows

      opening out onto the lawn at Foyers

     where New Forest ponies sometimes grazed

      such a fine day it was

      with the breeze lifting fallen leaves

      into a momentary vortex

      as  dry leaves spiraled up into a helix

      then fell back to the patio as calm prevailed

      there were no dark clouds in the sky

      except his good Lady

      who hated onset of winter

      Foyers where ponies brought their foals

      geese pecked at fallen quince

      wood was stacked by the front door

      ready for winter fires

      was Foyers such a place where old paths met?

      it seemed actors   actresses   often stayed there

      while playing Southampton Rep

      & poets came and went

      never paying rent

      © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016