A quiet moment in the grass this morning — just me, my camera, and a lone mushroom in the light to guide me down memory lane — a soft umbrella for tired legs and fading recollections. This poem is the path I followed beneath its shelter.
I don’t often do this, but before the poem, I’ve added a song that’s always offered me a quiet kind of shelter. Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm feels like the right companion for this morning’s walk and the memories that followed.
Memory Lane
I’m slowly drifting back along a familiar winding track.
My old legs feel like used lard — I can’t travel another yard; the climb has been long and hard.
Please, can you give me shelter here, under your mushroom’s umbrella?
Let my weariness rest for a few moments while my memory lane’s missing residents struggle to recall who’s the President.
And as the day drifts on, this song carries my missing dreams down along memory lane.
In the cool, silvery hush between daytime calm and midnight cloud‑glow, tonight’s full moon drifts above, coinciding with the poem’s own shifting rhythms below.
Below the Coconut Palms
The world’s a sphere of disparity, like the incongruity between the becalmed daytime moon and the shiny orb’s cloudy midnight party — savouring dark-side ice cream with a silver spoon and sipping on milky star-dust until noon.
While down here on planet Earth, between Perth and Fort Worth, I perceive nothing is calm below the empty coconut palms.
Where wanderlust meets wonder — let this song carry you to the far places your heart remembers.
Nancy’s, Lai “Singed” challenged me to try the form myself. I’d never written a Lai before, but her poem inspired this first attempt — a small reply shaped from her spark. Nancy: Singed – The Elephant’s Trunk
A traditional lai is a short French poetic form built on a pattern of nine lines, arranged in three stanzas. Each stanza follows this structure:
Lines 1–2: 5 syllables, same end rhyme
Line 3: 2 syllables, repeated refrain
Lines 4–5: 5 syllables, same end rhyme
Line 6: 2 syllables, repeated refrain
Lines 7–8: 5 syllables, same end rhyme
Line 9: 2 syllables, repeated refrain
The rhyme scheme is: a a b / a a b / a a b
The refrain (“truth hurts”) repeats at the end of each stanza, giving the lai its heartbeat.
Feature Image Above:A pale, gold sun, a held breath, a path unfolding —and a quiet truth still finds its way through.
Early yesterday morning, I read Gigi’s fierce and tender poem, and something in her words stirred an old ache of my own. What began as a quick response grew into this small reckoning — a quiet look at age, longing, and the goals that slip beyond our grasp.
Still offline, still smiling. While the internet takes its sweet time returning, I’ve tapped out a whimsical little poem on my tiny iPhone screen — a lighthearted look at my ongoing battle with the great digital void. Hope it brings a grin.
And fittingly, as this article goes live, I’m pleased to announce that my internet connection has finally returned.
No Connection, or Seven Rhyming Couplets
I’m in isolation; I have no internet connection.
Now falling beyond day five, without my writer’s bee hive.
ISP could not solve the problem – oh, what a sad conundrum
There’s a frog and toad on the outside pole’s naughty node.
Linesmen, trucks, and ladders are required; I’m frustrated, tired, and uninspired.
Might be fixed in another 48 hours … plenty of time to pluck more moonflowers.
Now climbing into day seven, I’m sailing up the internet’s stairway to heaven.
And now, with the moon back in view and the wires behaving, here’s the song that carried me through.
This poem was penned in May 2024 and quietly tucked away. Rediscovering it today felt like stepping back into the room where it began, so I’ve gently revised it for my Throwback Friday reflection.
The Universe Beyond My Wardrobe’s Doors (Revised)
I live in a small, compact villa. My abode is comfortable and cozy. The bedroom doubles up as my writer’s studio and library.
The wardrobe’s doors are near the end of my bed. On the doors, I hang a calendar and a special photo of me and Carole taken for our 25th anniversary
I gaze at the calendar and ponder. The appointments are in black, important dates are marked in red, and my poetry events are scribbled in blue.
The calendar has many blank squares — the days I spend writing. I write to her about love and coping. I write for myself, about life and nature.
I write for everyone who reads my poems. I write my thoughts about humanity’s existence within the universe and the great beyond. I write words, “Until Eyes Hear Sound.”
As the room opens into the universe once more, here’s a song to travel with — much like Melanie’s lovely old “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” carrying my memories back into the light.
Hello, dear readers and followers. As you may know, I stopped producing my “Tullawalla Booklets” at #31 because that was the house number of our family’s Tullawalla Homestead. Yet the booklet format is a superb way for me to catalogue the vast number of poems I produce, and as the saying goes, “I Am Turning Another Page”. Here I have begun a new series of poem booklets, called “Shangri La”, the name of my little Villa, and it is my piece of “earthly paradise, a retreat from the pressures of modern civilization”. I now have “2354”poems gathered across these booklets (On my bookshelf, sits “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, with 1775 poems — when I first began writing, I never imagined I would one day surpass that number.)
“Like all my booklets, this one is here to be read at your leisure — no rush, no expectation, just an open page waiting when you are.”
Click >>Here, for the link to your FREE: PDF Copy of“Shangri La, Volume 20, Life’s Missing Teacher.”
once upon a time a poet without rhyme looked up from the waiting line — the sky whispered its warning: you were never meant to wear a label, nor born to be one‑of‑a‑kind
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,“An Interview With Time,” appears in the new issue. You can read it by following the link below. >> An Interview With Time – Coffee House Writers
I’ve written about Time in many poems before, and a few of those familiar lines resurfaced as I shaped this one. It felt natural to bring them together here — especially on a day when Time was willing to cooperate and stand still for a moment.
In the stillness where Time stands present, let the music hold the vow that words can only touch.
G’day readers. It has been an emotional weekend — my mother’s birthday yesterday, my wife’s funeral day, and Mother’s Day today here in Australia. This haiku is a small tribute to the gracious and courageous women who shaped me, and to the strength their lives still give me as I move forward.
Willing (a Haiku)
Still willing to fly Black sky and an arctic wind Nothing holds me back
For the women who taught me to rise, even on the coldest of days.
