Category: Nature

The Ancient Fern Survives

Featured Image Above: by Derrick Knight > https://derrickjknight.com/2022/06/10/rich-pickings/

The Images below: are from my courtyard ..





The Ancient Fern Survives




Selfish, unopened minds remain numbed

False eye-lashes are heavy and closed

Botoxed lips are silent and sealed

And elephant ears have been pegged out of sight




But there under our careless feet

The earth’s ferns have agelessly survived

Three hundred and sixty million years

Without changing the appearance of their golden leaves

That timelessly regenerate themselves

By naturally releasing their fertilising spores






Ivor Steven (c) June 2022

Walking in Winter Rain



Welcome to wintry Geelong

One day, shimmering sunshine

The next, cold as the South Pole


But there he sits

At the front door

Waiting for his morning walk


Ok Frankie “Let’s brave it”

The wind is frigid

The misty rain is hard

And my eyes are crying

Icy droplets in the snow


But I am not complaining

As I think about the children

Sheltering in their damp cellars

Hiding from Putin’s hard rain

A deluge of bombs and bullets

Callously sent to kill and maim




** Please enjoy the Waterboys song below, “Mad as the Mist and Snow”, the words are directly taken from the W B Yeats poem of the same and musically adapted by Mike Scott

The Waterboys Lyrics ( by,W B Yeats)

“Mad As The Mist And Snow”

Bolt and bar the shutter for the foul winds blow
Our minds are at their best this night and I seem to know
That everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow
That everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow.

Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below
And here is Tully’s open page, how many years ago
Were you and I, lads, mad as the mist and snow?
Were you and I, lads, mad as the mist and snow?

You ask what makes me sigh, what makes me shudder so
I shudder and I sigh to think that even Cicero
And many minded Homer were mad as the mist and snow
That Cicero and Homer were mad as the mist and snow
That Cicero and Homer were mad as the mist and snow
…






Ivor Steven ©  June 2022

Who Has The Foggiest? (a Limerick)

This week’s challenge on Weekly Prompts is: MISSING. Please go over and visit their fabulous site by clicking on >> Here .. and my Limerick below is in response to the prompt ‘Missing’


 
 
Who Has The Foggiest? (a Limerick) 




I cannot see the morning moon 

There’s no sunshine in my breakfast spoon 

The heaviest of fogs falls 

I cannot hear the birds’ calls 

Has our world condemned nature’s tune? 






Ivor Steven ©  May 2022

The Rear of Night (Revised)



My fading dawn was impossible to identify

A heavy fog had kidnapped my sky

Sabotaging my morning sunlight

The day disappeared in front of my eyes

The passing of night left a murky blight

There’s no start nor end to my blurred sight

Breathing in moist air, I gasp, “where’s the moon?”

Had my dismal forecast unravelled too soon?

Is this shadowless gloom?

The beginning of doom ?






Ivor Steven ©  May 2022

Under A Vanishing Sky




The dawn is a gray silent sea

And as a cold fog invades me



I see a green paddock

Without a horizon

Vanishing into oblivion




I see a ghostly power-source

Hang without opposition

Vanishing into oblivion



I see a ghastly concrete Czar

Without compassion

Disappearing into oblivion






Ivor Steven ©  May 2022

Sunflower Seeds (a Tanka)

Over at Weekly Prompts, the monthly Colour Challenge for May is:  Mellow Yellow. Please go and visit their fabulous site by clicking >> Here . Below is my “Tanka” response to their ‘Colour Prompt’ ..



Sunflower Seeds (a Tanka)



Blue skies were mellow

Fields were peaceful and yellow

Sunflowers grew free

Then foreign tanks squashed their seeds

On tomorrow’s scarred harrows






Ivor Steven (c) May 2022

Life is a Bowl of Fudge, is up at Coffee House Writers Magazine

Hello dear readers and followers, as you may know, I now write for “Coffee House Writers” magazine on a fortnightly basis, and my poem “Life is a Bowl of Fudge”, is in this weeks edition of Coffee House Writers Magazine. … please click on the link below to read my poem, at Coffee House Writers >> https://coffeehousewriters.com/life-is-a-bowl-of-fudge/






Ivor Steven (c) May 3rd 2022