Category: Photos

Wading in Dry Ice

Featured Image Above: A quiet stretch of the Moorabool, holding its breath in the summer heat.”

Nancy >> RDP Thursday: river – The Elephant’s Trunk
Nancy’s haiku about winter’s thin ice stirred something in me this morning. Her quiet image of a fragile river set my thoughts drifting back home, where our waterways are thinning for a very different reason. Her words nudged me toward the dry, sunburnt world I’ve been watching all summer, and this poem arrived as my response





Wading in Dry Ice

Hardly a drop of rain
Has fallen on our sunburnt plains
Rivers are slimy drains
No fields of grain
Nor wading cranes
Only dusty stains
On the windowpanes

And again
Dry ice runs through my veins
While the windmill vanes
Rotate in vain




“I’ve always felt this song holds the heartbeat of a parched Australian summer. It seemed the right companion for these words.”





Ivor Steven  ©  February 2026

Yet to be Found

A fallen flowering bush caught my eye on the way back from our morning walk — knocked flat by last night’s storm, yet still holding colour. The sight struck a familiar chord, and the words came quickly, shaped by that quiet recognition of what it means to be brought down and still not done.





Yet to be Found

I’m lying on the ground.
The overnight storm knocked me down.
I’m feeling flat and unsound;
my flowers are turning brown.
When will I be found?

Do they know, I need to be reset?
I’m still bound to this mound –
and I’m not dead yet!






Ivor Steven  ©  February 2026

Throwback Friday, Sadness (a Senryu)

Today’s Throwback Friday poem (originally written in July 2023) is drawn from my upcoming book, Time Hears No Sound. It appears as the first poem in the Senryu section of Chapter 10, Time’s Short Poems: Haiku, Tanka, etc.
A small return to 2023, where shadows still had something to teach me.




Sadness (a Senryu)


Below the grayness
Naked emotions stumble
Between the shadows



For a soundtrack to this quiet ache, here’s Leonard Cohen’s Show Me the Place — a voice searching through the same shadows.”





Ivor Steven  ©  February 2026

Our Cafe to the Rescue (a Haiku)

Featured Image Above: Recouping composure, one café moment at a time.


Frankie and I, settling into the calm, captured in little snapshots from our café breather.



Our Cafe to the Rescue (a Haiku)

It’s time to relax
And recoup our composure
A place without hooks






Ivor Steven  ©  February 2026

Above and Beyond the Horizon


Where the cloud‑horizon meets the fading sun, twilight balances its colours on the edge of evening


Above and Beyond the Horizon


Here, beneath the twilight zone’s archway,
I see a phenomenal golden causeway.

There, above the horizon’s sentinal treeline
and below the cloudbank’s grigio plateau –
like another parallel pseudo-horizon –

mysteriously, the yellow band of light
momentarily emerges,
despite the fading sun folding into night.








Ivor Steven  ©  February 2026

A Blackbird’s Night

Featured Image Above: Was created by Copilot and me.





A Blackbird’s Night


Not everything said
understands the light
within our heads.

On a Wolf Moon night,
what I write,
in black and white,
is not always right –
slumber darkens my sight.

I am no white knight,
nor a feathery kite.
And despite
my comfy campsite,

the world’s warring blight
incites me to always fight
for what is right
in black and white.




Footnote: I’m pleased to report that last week’s plumbing job was completed today. Even though I was tired and it was nearly dark, we still managed to go for our walkie …




Ivor Steven  ©  January 2026

The Earth and the Sky

Featured Image Above: Created by Copilot and me. Where light breaks through, and wings find their path.





The Earth and the Sky


“Good morning, Earth,”
Said the solar sky
To my little piece of the universe,
Where I see our illustrious Sun
Illuminating the waning Half-moon.

And there, below the umbrella of cosmic light,
the birds are embracing their empyrean life.





A moment that stunned me into stillness — sky, bird, and song all speaking the same truth.





Ivor Steven ©  February 2026

Time Doesn’t Go Tick-Tock

Feature Image Above: Created by Copilot and me.
“Time doesn’t tick—it unlocks. Not with rhythm, but with riddles.”

And thank you to Beth( https://ididnthavemyglasseson.com/) whose comment on my post, “Time, My Muse,” inspired me to create this poem.
“love it! time makes its own rules for sure”




Time Doesn’t Go Tick-Tock

Time is neither tick nor tock;
Time cannot be deadlocked.
It takes no notice of the weather sock.

Time never throws rocks
At either the Eastern Bloc
Or the future’s aftershocks.



A glimpse into the strange places time wanders when it looks back.




Ivor Steven ©  February 2026