A peaceful sunset can feel like the world exhaling — yet sometimes, in that fading light, a different truth appears. This morning’s sky carried both beauty and unease, and my thoughts followed the sun toward the shadowed side of our turning planet.
The Dark Side of Sunset
I was absentmindedly marching, away from worldly soul-searching, when I saw the sun arching toward the dark side of our planet.
Then I wondered who’s there on the other side of this old orb of granite.
And who decides who lives and who dies during the bleak, black night, when the bombs batter what’s left of the moonlight.
A final reflection on the sun’s descent — and the stark questions it leaves burning in the dark.
Hello, dear readers and followers. I contribute to Coffee House Writers magazine (USA) every second week, and I’m delighted to share that my latest poem,“Living in the Shade,” appears in the new issue. You can read it by following the link below.
This week’s piece was shaped quietly at my café table, with late‑day light drifting across the floor and Portugal. The Man’s live performance of “Shade” echoing through my headphones — a fitting companion for a poem about those left waiting in the dimmer corners of our world.
Let this song cast its own soft light across the shadows we carry.
Chocolates are delightfully delicious … wars are deadly and destructive … Above the valley, a white-feathered messenger rises — reminding us how fragile peace can be
Yesterday we visited the Moorabool Valley Chocolate Café for coffee and cake, and the moment brought this poem back to me — a piece I wrote in August 2018, when a simple liquor chocolate stirred memories, questions, and the ache of a world still at war.
Eating Chocolates And Watching Wars (Revised)
Hungrily, I’m eating a liquor chocolate — a selfish heavenly delight, arousing my old mind’s senses.
I wonder what she would be thinking, looking down from the stars through her sensitive olive eyes — her everlasting smile, her gracious courage, her generous heart, her forgiving soul, her love for me and you.
I wonder what she would be thinking, seeing these futile, bloody wars through her compassionate olive eyes — the dead and maimed, the millions of shuffling homeless, the distraught, broken families, the crying children locked in sheds, the desperate refugees with no beds.
I wonder what she would be thinking while she preciously holds the last white dove, observing these senseless wars that never ever ends.
And for the song that holds the cracks and the light, here is Leonard Cohen’s Anthem — offered to a world where the last white dove may never fly free again.
There are moments when a song gathers everyone in the room into one breath.Watching “Spirit Bird” live in Brussels, I felt that pull — a reminder that we’ve walked this path before, laughed and cried before, stood on this same wounded ground before. And still, the spirit rises.
Morning’s silent wings keep tracing the same old stories.
“Spirit Bird”
Yes, we’ve seen it all before “Give it time, and we wonder why, do what we can, laugh, and we cry And we sleep in your dust because we’ve seen this all before.” … The finale lyrics from Xavier Rudd’s emotional song “Spirit Bird.”
As the weekend’s protest thread continues, this poem looks at what we count — and what we choose not to.
VJ’s article on holding to a deeper “why” nudged me toward this poem — a poignant protest shaped by questions of time, land, and what we risk by looking away. Her story is below—the spark behind this poem. >> Having a Why – One Woman’s Quest
Also, over at Weekly Prompts, the Weekend Challenge is the word Invasive. To visit their fabulous site, please click >> Here
Handless Watchbands, or Who’s Counting
How many grains of sand are left in the ancient hourglass? Why are the Holy grasslands a desert full of misguided missiles and handless watch bands?
How many missiles do the leaders in Versailles have to count before the amount is called genocide?
For what we cannot look away from, let the song bear witness.
Sometimes poems arrive in clusters, even when we don’t plan them. After posting A Fistful of Sand (CHW), another anti‑war piece surfaced, and Beyond the Debris continued that same uneasy thread … It seems I’ve unintentionally written a small trilogy — each poem looking at conflict from a different angle, each one carrying its own weight. Tonight’s piece steps further into the aftermath, where the smoke settles, and the world tries to breathe again.
Solar Isosceles and More Debris
From behind the bushes and trees, crows crash through the branches and leaves.
And flee toward our solar Isosceles, like blind bats that can now see beyond the world’s charred canopy –
a toxic cloud of wartime debris and the smouldering embers of expendable draftees.
There is a clown, with an apricot crown under his dressing gown, who’s swinging upside down on the outskirts of town
The false king is insane, with a selfish brain. He’s inhumane, and greed is his game.
Without shame his aim is to blame anyone whose name is not on his “gravy-train.”
And to close, here’s a song that carries the same simmering energy — a little theatrical, a little exasperated, and perfectly tuned to the mood of this piece.
