Nature – Page 2 – Ivor.Plumber/Poet

Spring is Singing (a Tanka)

Spring arrived today with a quiet kind of joy — a bird lifting into the morning light, gulls gliding above the bay, and a flowering tree catching the sun just right. On my walk to the café, these small moments gathered around me, each one adding its own note to the season’s first song. By the time I sat down with my coffee, a Tanka had already begun to bloom — shaped by the warm promise of the new season.

Spring is Singing (a Tanka)

Daylight’s kissing earth,
Its warm glow hugs everything,
And the midday sun
Thaws my once‑wavering wings —
Now nature’s choir is singing

As spring begins to rise, a tender melody of warmth and light to accompany the season’s first song.

Ivor Steven © September 2026

Coffee House Writers Magazine features my new poem, “Spring Will Never Vanish”

“To frozen clods even spring’s invisible law returns with grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn” … Walt Whitman

Hello, dear readers and followers. I contribute to Coffee House Writers Magazine (USA) every second week, and I’m delighted to share that my latest poem, “Spring Will Never Vanish (a Villanelle),” appears in the new issue. You can read it by following the link below.
>> Spring Will Never Vanish – Coffee House Writers

As Whitman knew and this villanelle remembers, spring’s law always returns — and Tom Waits sings it home.

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 © September 2026

There Are No ‘Cents’ in Pretense

Just before midnight, I wandered through Nancy’s whimsical corner of The Elephant’s Trunk, where her poetic mischief nudged me over the fence of common sense. In that soft hour, a playful spark took hold — and this anecdotal poem tumbled out as my midnight excuse.
For Nancy >> Poet’s Excuse – The Elephant’s Trunk

And because midnight rarely behaves itself, here’s Nick Cave’s “Night Raid” slipping in with its dark velvet mood before the poem leaps the fence again.

There Are No ‘Cents’ in Pretense

None of it needs to make sense
no matter present tense
or past tense

Your quill has a license
to leap the pretense fence —
forget about common sense

And write delicious nonsense
in future tense
with imaginative effulgence

And to round out this midnight ramble, here’s the song I shared with Nancy — Leonard Cohen’s wonderfully unusual “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” a wandering little masterpiece that trots alongside any poet willing to leap the fence of pretense.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

Steve the Snail’s Twisted Trail

Morning wanderings often gift me small mysteries — a snail tracing Olympic rings across the cold pavement, a chalk‑scribbled “One Day” left by some early riser, and the quiet frost that makes creatures reconsider their usual routes. Today, Steve the Snail seemed to have a message for me… and perhaps for anyone feeling a little twisted by winter’s chill.

Over at Weekly Prompts, it’s the final weekend of August, and it’s time for the One Day Prompt. Please visit their fabulous site by clicking on >> Here

Steve the Snail’s Twisted Trail

I’m wondering if Steve the Snail is lost,
discombobulated by the morning frost

He usually leaves a straight-lined trail
from the rose garden to the window rail

But today his trail looked like Olympic rings —
perhaps a note left by his frozen shoestrings.

A gentle, pressing reminder letter:
“Hey Ivor … where’s my new winter sweater?”

For this frosty morning’s whimsical trail, I’ve paired Steve’s looping, Olympic‑ring wanderings with Nive Nielsen’s ethereal “Are You Ready” — a song that drifts like cold breath and whispers back at the paths we leave behind.

Ivor Steven © August 2026

Tracing the Lines

The late afternoon moon often feels like a reminder — a quiet presence tracing its way across the sky while we trace our own paths below. In its soft light, every line in our hands and every mark on the land seems to carry a story of where we’ve been and where we’re still going. This poem rests inside that moment of reflection, asking what it means to follow the lines that shape our lives.

Tracing the Lines

There you are,
all of you,
way out there,
full and aware –
tracing the lines
in my hands.

And there are
no new brands
on the land;
every grain of sand
still understands.

There’s a crack
in everything –
in all of you
out there,
feeling open and bare –
tracing the lines
in my full glare.

A recently released piece, carrying the same gentle pull of the moon’s slow journey across the sky

Ivor Steven © August 2026

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

Opaqueness

Last night’s twilight slipped across the sky in muted layers — a quiet blend of fading colour, soft cloud, and the half‑moon’s pale glow behind drifting haze. Standing there with the camera, I felt the day thinning into something slower, dimmer, almost weightless.
From that hush, this small poem emerged — a reflection on how light, taste, and time blur at the edges as evening diffuses into night.

What Do You See 355
For WDYS, Sadje offers us a photo by Lensloji (Pexels) of a murmuration of birds forming a shifting pattern above a city skyline and minaret at sunset.

Opaqueness

Time is colourless,
yet daytime becomes darkness
as evening clouds advertise
twilight’s transient demise.

Time is tasteless,
yet midnight is infused with blackness
except for the half-moon’s translucent
loving spoonful of notilucence.

And in the quiet blur between knowing and not knowing, this song finds its way.

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.”

Birds of a Feather (a Haiku)

A small moment in the morning sky… a flutter of colour, a whisper of calm, and a reminder of how lightly the world can move when we pause long enough to notice.

Birds of a Feather (a Haiku)

The black and white birds
Fly happily together
A wingspan apart

A quiet nod to harmony — where every feather, every colour, finds its place.

A Fantail’s Flighty Tale, or a Tricky Tail

Sometimes the morning gifts me a little magic.
Yesterday’s wander with Frankie brought a flurry of feathered moments — a Fantail on a rail, a Magpie mid‑grumble, a Mudlark caught in a swirl of tiny bravado. These images arrived with such charm and mischief that the words followed instantly, light as a breeze. What began as a simple set of photos quickly turned into a playful tale of one tiny bird bossing the bigger ones about, all in good humour and whimsy.

The cheeky Fantail and the grumpy Magpie

The twirling Fantail and the brave Mudlark

A Fantail’s Flighty Tale, or a Tricky Tail

I’m not a fiendish tax collector,
nor a fat company director.
I’m not a bossy dictator,
nor a busy Choir conductor.

I’m just a flighty tiny fella
who flits around like a flirty ballerina —
a cheeky little Fantail who unfurls
on the breeze, commander of curls;
Magpie stumbles, Mudlark sighs —
yet all obey my mischievous eyes.

A burst of bright, buoyant energy to match my cheeky Fantail’s playful world — Nick Cave’s “Joy” feels like the perfect musical wink to close this whimsical tale.