Environment – Ivor.Plumber/Poet

Eye to Eye, or I to I

Down a quiet back lane near the café, this striking street art stopped me in my tracks — it felt like a quiet conversation waiting to happen, eye to eye with the unexpected.

Eye to Eye, or I to I

With one eye querying mankind
and the other eye wondering
about my state of mind —
bewildered and always pondering
what’s real beyond my Venetian blinds.

I am neither refined nor confined,
and I have escaped being quarantined.

I question myself.
Are my eyes behind the times,
or have I misread my bookshelf’s
poetry finds and the fairytale rhymes?

A final glance, and the moment drifted on — leaving its quiet echo behind, carried forward now in the music’s slow drift

Ivor Steven © August 2026

Pigeons of the World (a Tanka)

This afternoon’s sky gifted me a flock of silhouettes — pigeons rising and circling through the light as if carrying the world’s weight on their wings. Their quiet resilience inspired the Tanka below, a small reflection on the lives caught beneath the shadows of conflict.

Pigeons of the World (a Tanka)

Here under the sun
I am not the only one
Being overrun
By the world’s greedy hired guns
Who’s minding our war torn sons?

And still the sky remembers what we forget — even the pigeons know the rise and fall of empires.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

The Impending Implosion

This afternoon’s quiet wait at the café, with Violet’s poem still echoing in my thoughts, stirred a darker reflection beneath the softening sky. These images and lines emerged as the light shifted and the world felt both beautiful and fragile.

Violet’s thoughtful little poem was the spark that set these lines in motion.
Violet >> Nibbles | Thru Violet’s Lentz

The Impending Implosion

Corruption and corrosion
Decimating nature’s frontlines
Ongoing repetitive ugly explosions
Nagging away at the senses of mankind
Ultimately, there’ll be a cataclysmic implosion

And in the hush between notes, the world feels both fragile and fiercely alive.

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 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.

Ivor Steven © June 2026

Dependable

In the hush between treetops, sky, and the distant sun, small moments of flight remind us how quietly the world keeps holding on

Dependable

From the resilient treetops,
the curious crows know
the honourable sun never stops —
rain, sleet, or snow.

Warming our souls
from light-years away,
yet far outreaching
our ordinary day.

And beyond the crows’
resourceful thinking,
where the sky’s mystical banjos
are perpetually playing

And somewhere beneath all this light and shadow, we keep finding the strength to rise again.

How and Why

In the hush of a grey autumn morning, two birds wheel away into the distance, leaving behind a question only the sky can answer.

How and Why

Two silhouettes fluttering in the sky,
Together, the shadows swoop by.
Flying among Autumn’s silent clouds,
There above Humanity’s rowdy crowd.

They gaze down and wonder how
That lawless mob did somehow allow
Nature’s garden to become holier-than-thou.

The birds quietly turn and wave goodbye
And decide: theirs not to reason why.

As the birds wheel away from the how and why, step with the music into the space where the poem’s questions still linger.

Here are a few lyrics from “We Lost The Sea – A Quiet Place.”

“Abandon control, obey gravity
From here, earth’s claw cannot over bare

I hear nothing, dead silence
I grasp as comfort
I pilot limbs as if they were wings
Carve through the clouds
Plummet to the below
I pilot limbs”

Ivor Steven © May 2026

Throwback Friday, Polar Bears and Cold Sheep

In keeping with this week’s ‘Environment’ theme, today’s Throwback Friday poem (originally written in July 2020) is drawn from my upcoming book, Time Hears No Sound. It appears as a poem in Chapter 2, Nature: An Unbiased Timekeeper

Polar Bears and Cold Sheep

hello world, do you see my frown?
will the blizzards ever calm down?
will the rains forever fall on broken ground?
will our tears of silence be the only sound?

the frozen wounds are deep
the mountains of snow are steep
humans need to stop being cold sheep
and begin taking their own individual leaps

the rewards of being caring and kind
far outweigh the coldness of being left behind

For the wounds we’ve carved into the earth, may this music echo the quiet truth our planet keeps trying to tell us.

Our Buckled Bloc

On our buckled bloc, innocence stands alone on thinning ground.

Our Buckled Bloc

Have we lost the plot?
Here, on our buckled bloc.

The planet is still spinning,
but the environment is shrinking.

The polar bears are dying;
isolated, Nature is only surviving
and is visibly crying.

The land is scarred and blistered,
the oceans unwisely polluted,
and even the air we breathe is tainted.

Here’s a song to wander with through the world we’ve weathered.