Environment – Ivor.Plumber/Poet

Winging Toward Peace

Sometimes a single flight can carry more meaning than the landscape beneath it.
This morning’s mudlark — lifting from foreign sands, gliding toward familiar green, then swept off course by an unexpected breeze — became the quiet messenger behind this piece. Its journey echoed the fragile paths we all take toward understanding, toward apology, toward peace.
What followed was a poem shaped by wings, weather, and the distant hum of icy choirs.

Winging Toward Peace

Swooping out past the sands of foreign ground
Then flying toward the green, bushy trees
of that once-fabled promised land —
only to be diverted by a bold eastern breeze
that buckled my wings and trembling knees
and sent me falling into the Arctic freeze,
where icy choirs continue the cheers
still singing in the hush of sub‑zero seas

There, huddling inside an iceberg’s solitary marque,
all the compassionate delegates from overseas
gathered to hear pleas for apologies and guarantees
from Greenland’s patient, peaceful trustees.

From foreign sands to frozen seas, the journey ends where quiet voices still know the weight of peace. And so, in Greenland’s calm, the final note on harmonious independence lingers.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

The Overseer

These stunning silhouettes stopped me in my tracks — quiet guardians perched above a fragile world. Their calm presence sparked the environmental protest tone of the four couplets below, a reminder of what remains pure when we look up and listen.

The Overseer

I am the overseer of my kingdom,
a global realm without a dome.

No barbed-wire fences, only sky,
beyond mankind’s envious eyes.

No landmines, only trees,
to house and shelter me.

No hard rain, only the sun,
glowing, to enlighten everyone

“And now, let the sky speak, where the light continues in sound, with a final glow of gentle music.”

Ivor Steven © August 2026

The Blue Fescue

The sky felt unsettled today — light pushing through cloud, a lone bird cutting across the haze, and the sun straining behind its thinning veil. These moments stayed with me, each one a quiet reminder of how fragile our atmosphere has become. From those three glimpses of the day, this small protest poem emerged, carrying both concern and hope for the blue we’re slowly losing.

Alongside that moment of sky and flight, two other images stayed with me today — another glimpse of the unsettled light above, and a quote from The Book Bird notice board. Richard Flanagan’s words felt uncannily aligned with the mood of this piece, reminding me how writing can step beyond politics and speak from a deeper, more human place. Together, these images helped shape the protest thread running through The Blue Fescue.

The Blue Fescue

Above Earth’s governing clouds,
beyond the atmosphere’s
atomic shrouds,
I hear the sun’s white veneer
pulsating from inside
the sky’s diminishing blue.

There hiding — teary-eyed —
waiting for an overdue
enlightening breakthrough
to cure the world’s
stewed blue fescue.

A song for the shifting sky — a reminder that even in the blur between heroes and villains, we’re still searching for the light that carries us forward.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

The World’s Dulcified Sty

A whisper from the deep past — where the earth was whole and the old rhythms still held sway. The music stirs that memory, and the images catch its fading light.

The World’s Dulcified Sty

The twilight sun doesn’t die;
it just goes down to hide
for a bit of shut-eye
and a quiet cry —

about the Earth being classified
by those who turn a blind eye
to the world’s dulcified sty,
that continues to be cannibalised
by the corporate blowfly’s
mercenary money supply.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

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.

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.

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.”

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.