Philosophical – Ivor.Plumber/Poet

Throwback Friday, Eating Chocolates and Watching Wars

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.

Until Eyes Hear Sound

Amazon >> Amazon.com : Until Eyes Hear Sound

Lulu Books >> Until Eyes Hear Sound (lulu.com)

Perceptions:

Amazon >> Perceptions : Steven, Ivor, Knight, Derrick: Amazon.com.au: Books
Lulu Books >> Perceptions (lulu.com)

Tullawalla:

Amazon >> Tullawalla A Meeting Place Where My Empty Hands are Full of Memories and Rhymes : Steven, Ivor: Amazon.com.au: Books

OR: >> You may email me directly for a signed copy at
ivorrs20@gmail.com … and I can send you a PayPal account,
for the Book, plus Postage.

Ivor Steven © June 2026

Words Fall Through the Window

This poem grew from three small conversations across the WordPress community — first with David, then with Nancy, and then with David once more. Each reply carried its own quiet image, and when I gathered them together, they seemed to form a single drift of thought, as if the words had slipped through the same window and landed in one place.
In stanza order, they are.
1. David: Sketches, poems, scraps, or: Dreams – The Skeptic’s Kaddish
2. Nancy: Unread Message – The Elephant’s Trunk
3. David: Intellectual or Public introspectual – The Skeptic’s Kaddish

Between light and shadow, these moments gather — small echoes leading toward the words that follow.

Written in response to Sadje’s ‘What Do You See? #345’ prompt
>> What do you see # 345- 15, June- 2026 – Keep it alive

A quiet moment at the window that opened into the poem below

Words Fall Through the Window

Looking through a window
Searching for tomorrow
There is only an afterglow
As life lingers in limbo

Petals softly fall
Knowing the sound of silence
“Do not wait for me”

Sailing alone in my rescue craft
I sense a spirited updraught
rising through the stairwell’s shaft

Where the view softens, and the silence deepens, somewhere beyond the glass, the music carries what the words leave behind

Ivor Steven © June 2026

Our DATE with Destiny

Below is a small acrostic piece – a few lines arranged to catch the essence of the moment, a kind of epitome distilled from the fading light.

As the golden eye strained to feel the light, twilight gathered what the day left behind

Our DATE with Destiny

Deep behind twilight’s hessian sky
And down below the auburn horizon
There resides life’s golden eye
Ethereally aware of Earth’s dying oceans

As the world wilts under the strain
Do we hold the weight of what remains?

As the light settles – for the feelings that linger after the day is done, here is the song that holds them.

Ivor Steven © June 2026

The Poet’s Secret Notebook

Before dawn settled, and after a sleepless night, these small doorways into a wandering mind found their way into my bedside notebook…

An unexpected sign on our walk home — a cheerful echo to the morning’s wandering thoughts

The Poet’s Secret Notebook

Turn the poet’s page
Feel his restless rage

Open secret doors
Hunger for more

Repair broken windows
Learn from nature’s crows

Your windows are not mirrors
Reflections are not the jurors’

Follow your dreams
Do not listen to machines

From secret pages to shifting strings, may the music carry the last of these wandering thoughts into your dreams

Ivor Steven © June 2026

The Forest, a Fantasy Land

The Little Cloud Studio window display at the Creative Geelong Makers Hub stirred a memory of Emily Dickinson’s quiet devotion to nature — this piece is my own small letter back to the world, written from a forest of imagination.

“This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me —
The simple News that Nature told —
With tender Majesty, Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see —
For love of Her — Sweet — countrymen —
Judge tenderly — of Me.”

Emily Dickinson

The Forest, a Fantasy Land

Come join me in the forest’s fantasy land;
I know of a picture-perfect place
where the dappled sunlight
silently filters through the trees.

There’s a picnic table built for two.
I’ll bring a food hamper
and Emily Dickerson’s
magical book of poems.

Within the bower’s peace and quiet,
if you listen closely, nature’s gentle breeze
softly rustles through the ferns and leaves;
and then you’ll hear the green toadstools
from the forest floor’s mossy logs
humming a familiar tune.

Today’s music drifts from the heart of the forest — Enya’s “The Memory of the Trees.”

Ivor Steven © June 2026

Between the Moon and Clouds

Twilight gathered around me, the moon above and the land below — and this mural, a reminder of the ancient, living connection our First Nations people hold with Country.

Between the Moon
and Clouds

They say the world is changing,
but the moon cannot stop frowning,
while nature is unerringly hurting,
beneath our fettered feet.

Between the worried moon
and the settling clouds,
I perceive a loud rumbling sigh
from beyond the deep blue sky.

In one ferocious breath, Thor decries,
“Beware of the ground’s ringleader’s lies
about the Earth’s visible demise,
and hear the crust’s cries
with your own eyes.”

In the silence between day and night, the sky held its breath, and I paused on earth’s shimmering crust, letting the music rise where words could not.

Stamped and Dispatched

Gigi, wrote these words

“all of those things
divide us
separate us
they are labels
and we are not merchandise”

Below, is my poetic reply

Gigi >> This is what is done to all of us… | Rethinking Life

Stamped and Dispatched

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

It’s Sad

What began as two simple responses — one to the city’s hard truths, one to the fading light — has merged into a single reflection on how we move through darkness and bridge life’s rolling undertow.

The first stanza is Nancy’s, and the second is David’s.
Nancy … Asphalt Jungle – The Elephant’s Trunk
David … We stand, or: Our bodies tilt – The Skeptic’s Kaddish 🇮🇱

It’s Sad

It’s sad how some people can sink so low.
It’s sad how the onlookers come and go.
It’s sad how Skid Row groans and crows.
It’s sad how urban rainbows lose their glow,
and drown in life’s rolling undertow

Nearing the looming edge of night,
is there a hidden bridge
between life’s fading light
and that last, unbroken ridge?

And somewhere in the half‑light, we keep searching for the bridge to span life’s rolling undertow.

The World’s Spiritual Watchtower

The World’s Spiritual Watchtower

I’m fused to this planet,
and my synthetic walking shoes
are wearing thin on the granite.

I’m confused and sadly bemused
by humanity’s wayward news.

I gaze up at our radiant sun
and wonder about the solar power
that goes unused by the tonne.

I see birds cruising on the wind
angling their wings
toward the sun’s golden rind,
as if spellbound
by the mystical rising.

A glowing, cosmic sunflower
quietly expanding outwards
and shining upwards
to become the world’s
spiritual watchtower

A watchtower of sound to meet the poem’s rising light

From Beyond Nowhere

A lucky snapshot: a bird crossing an invisible line between sun and sky, caught in the quiet shimmer of possibility.

From Beyond Nowhere

Below the invisible line,
Between the sun and time,
It is impossible to know
That what we perceive
Are the stars’ definitive stare,
Or, whether the outer glow
Is the universe’s cosmic snow
From beyond nowhere.