Category: Nature

Memory Lane

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.




Ivor Steven ©  July 2026

Below the Coconut Palms

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.




Ivor Steven ©  July 2026

Behold

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.

Gigi >> FYI… | Rethinking Life


Behold

As I grow old
the heart goes cold,
so I am told.

I’ve never been bold,
nor has life been gold.
Dreams remain deep in my soul —
and now, as the mind unfolds,
they’re my only stronghold.

I’m yet to be paroled,
and the resolve of my goal
has been lost and sold.




And so I leave these lines here, drifting toward Cohen’s voice, where the narrowing of life becomes its own kind of truth.





Ivor Steven ©  June 2026

My Courtyard’s Sunflowers

Over at Weekly Prompts, the Colour Challenge for March is Yellow. To visit their fabulous site, please click >> Here.






My Courtyard’s Sunflowers


The sunflowers sway and say hello
Always happy and politely mellow
And never ever bellow
Like that orange badfellow
They are my garden’s yellow-cello’s







Ivor Steven ©  March 2026

Hope


Hope, today, and the new plant in 2017.

Hope, Philodendron selloum (Balinese Dream), has been a member of my courtyard’s fernery area for 8 years, and as you can see, the plant has large, wavy-edged, elephant ear leaves. Today, the fern stands at five feet tall and is covering a large portion of the fernery, and it’s time for “Hope” to have a trim.





Ivor Steven (c) July 2025