In keeping with this week’s ‘Moon’ theme, today’s Throwback Friday poem (originally written in January 2021) is drawn from my third book, Until Eyes Hear Sound. It appears in Chapter 8: Poetry in Slow Motion, and if you need to have a chat with me, “I am up here floating on the moon.”
Floating On The Moon
I am not always wrong And at times, I may have been right Behind my mask, I smile And at times, I grimace
Numbness has entered my bones Clumsiness guides my pen Awkwardness precedes my stride Uneasiness resonates in my voice
I am not able to walk on water And at times, I have sunk like a stone I live within my soul’s cocoon And at times, I am floating on the moon
On this quiet Easter morning, I’m sharing a poem shaped from small conversations and long-held echoes — a few stones rolled aside to let a little light through.
This poem grew from poetic anecdotes I first shared as comments on fellow bloggers’ posts. In stanza order, they are:
Hello, dear readers and followers. As you may know, I stopped producing my “Tullawalla Booklets” at #31 because that was the house number of our family’s Tullawalla Homestead. However, the booklet format is a superb way for me to catalogue the vast number of poems I produce, and as the saying goes, “I Am Turning Another Page”. Here I have begun a new series of poem booklets, called “Shangri La”, the name of my little Villa, and it is my piece of “earthly paradise, a retreat from the pressures of modern civilization”. I now have “2295” Poems filed in these booklet formats!! (On my bookshelf, I have “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, which contains 1775 poems … when I first started writing poems, I never envisaged that I would produce so many poems)
“Like all my booklets, this one is here to be read at your leisure — no rush, no expectation, just an open page waiting when you are.”
Click > HERE. for the link to your FREE: PDF Copy of“Shangri La, Volume 19, Leftover Heirlooms.”
In keeping with this week’s ‘Anti-war’ theme, today’s Throwback Friday poem (originally written in June 2024) is drawn from my upcoming book, Time Hears No Sound. It appears as a poem in Chapter 8, War: A Waste of Time
And I Wonder Why
On a windless winter morn I am walking beside the waveless bay Watching the white wispy clouds Wandering above the whispering trees
And I am wondering why Our worried and weeping world Wantonly wastes time On unworthy and wearisome wars
“Esmerelda”, a wonderfully dramatic song by Ben Howard
Sometimes poems arrive in clusters, even when we don’t plan them. After posting A Fistful of Sand (CHW), another anti‑war piece surfaced, and Beyond the Debris continued that same uneasy thread … It seems I’ve unintentionally written a small trilogy — each poem looking at conflict from a different angle, each one carrying its own weight. Tonight’s piece steps further into the aftermath, where the smoke settles, and the world tries to breathe again.
Solar Isosceles and More Debris
From behind the bushes and trees, crows crash through the branches and leaves.
And flee toward our solar Isosceles, like blind bats that can now see beyond the world’s charred canopy –
a toxic cloud of wartime debris and the smouldering embers of expendable draftees.
There is a clown, with an apricot crown under his dressing gown, who’s swinging upside down on the outskirts of town
The false king is insane, with a selfish brain. He’s inhumane, and greed is his game.
Without shame his aim is to blame anyone whose name is not on his “gravy-train.”
And to close, here’s a song that carries the same simmering energy — a little theatrical, a little exasperated, and perfectly tuned to the mood of this piece.
Ivor.Plumber/Poet 