The late-summer track runs blue with deep shade,
While cicadas rasp in sun-whitened trees;
And ask what secret lives inside the breeze,
You clasp my hand where sandy gullies fade.
I show the compass, by the years decayed,
Whose faithful needle leans, and never flees;
We watch the foam that feathers on the seas,
While on the shore our wandering steps are made.
You ask where north goes, in your small voice calm,
As though the world was just this morning born;
You spy a blue-tounged skink beneath a thorn,
And hold a broken shell within your palm.
The compass points its north through dusk and foam;
Your wondering hand points farther still—to home.
When we were kids, you liked to torment me, go to the park and climb the highest tree.
Run across gullies at high speed, leave me on the other side with shaking knees.
But then there were days by the TV watching Banana splits and Christopher Lee.
Going to the fields to hide in long grass then run round the streets and fall on our ****.
We moved like gypsies from place to place, new schools, new people, we accepted our fate.
The boy with the golden hair was by my side and I wasn’t lonely cause we were best mates.
Then came the day we no longer roamed, found schools with good teachers, at last we were home.
We got on our bikes to explore the estate; cautious and wary we sped round the place.
To our surprise the kids were friendly and fun, not hostile or tough, or in your face.
Young ones, older ones, boys and girls, down by the brook all summer long.
Through escapades, bonfires, occasional tiffs, the Steppingstone gang stayed strong.
Summer breaks, it goes to bed,
The sunburnt country is no longer red.
Autumn’s breath begins to creep
Across the plains and gullies deep.
It plays an eerie, thoughtful tune,
Beneath a warm and amber moon,
Whispering amongst the majestic gums
To warn the scrub the season comes.
While the changing leaves don't hit the eye:
Bursting gold appears beneath the southern sky,
Bright wattles along the dirt track
To push the longer shadows back.
A flock of cockatoos takes flight,
Screaming at the angled light.
For me, this wind is pure relief...
I find no need for any grief.
Written: June 18, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Constance La France
Quote: "The brain discovers, but emotions replicate past occurrences forevermore." By Poet
I glide amid suspense as the air grows dense.
Through amber fractures that scrape the fence,
Still blazed for the thrill your shadows wore—
The anchored verdict, of evermore.
A silted shard of time daze,
A wire-mesh mirror that grate and glaze,
It scrapes the shell where the marrow tore—
A signal throbbing evermore.
Through gullies choked with a sullen scent,
Through spans of gloom where lumber's bend,
Your strobes ignite on the slatted floor—
A sizzling earth expanding evermore.
You lodge inside the strained strain,
A white-hot core that no veil can drain,
The pulsing pitch, I cannot ignore—
A sinew humming evermore.
And after the casing snaps its seam
When digits fuse in a blinding beam,
This vacuum slams on a rock-bound shore—
The engine stilled in evermore.
Though metal cools in the still space.
The spirit-volt is gone, without a trace.
A hissing heat on rusty shore—
the agony intensified, evermore
The greeting is bone
on,
the meat strong
not challenging.
Flesh mounds
rise,
river valleys,
flicker nocturnal,
as tunnels run through
roughhewn gullies.
Time takes a walk
across rib backed ridges,
carved lifelines carry
flickering windows
tugging
visions behind them.
Groundswells ripple over
tremors,
topographies entwine,
openly unwind.
Hands unhitch
to clutch at words -
none
necessary.
The Road Up
The road up
hugs the side of a hill
and steep slopes fall
into dark gullies far below.
In places, tree trunks still wear
the blackened scars of past fires.
Further up, you enter a long archway
of shade, trees are taller and tower
in full height above the road -
ferns wave their extended fronds
as you pass - long ribbons of bark
hang down through the low cloud.
The air is damp and cold
with high country breath.
You stop, leave the car and walk
a little way into the forest.
All is quiet except for muted
forest sounds playing out
in a soft chorus on the edges
of your hearing. There are times
when you feel a sense of arrival,
that all the pathways
of your life have led to here.
No grand finale waits to mark
the moment, just an indifference
as if you were only ever a part
of a greater whole, the realisation
that you are not alone
but lost sometimes
in one of the many rooms
of your home.
Moon, why do you taunt me?
Your haunting glow consumes all I am.
I howl at your feet as you hang majestic
from a diamante sky
I am breathless, shackled to the earth as I gaze at your beauty, your shape centred in a clustered jewel.
Your children sparkle in sibling frame.
My heart is lost, no other will pacify the aching wound that protrudes from my chest
My healing is long and painful. Will sanity return? One day, maybe tomorrow?
You stole my dream, ripped into nocturnal misery as the ghosts pose in silent masks.
Regret stirs, clinging to the winds of a toxic flame.
Beguiling, my eyes burn as sunrise shapes its day,
Tender strands of light peak through the gullies and allies of my being.
Romance still forms within me, a harmonic tune that whistles with the easterly breeze, but this tranquil sea stirs madness. Fire will again light this soul once regret has done its worst and left my shadow.
Moon, never leave, be my secret no more, rejoice not weigh me down and, I will love you forever.
Intense suffrage ,malice behaved
while a sullen energy, balanced
upon, broad shoulders ,of pure
angst, I'd remember, your tainted
humongous shift, creating wrath
bestowed, so overtime, capturing
long days and long nights. you'd
yet to explore, breathing was rather
optional, I suppose, catering, to the
sighing minds, painstaking yesteryears
morbidly crafted, to fit perfectly, into
your self righteous, gullies of satisfying
graveness, you portrayed, as self worth
I was your muse, your masterpiece unveiled
amidst tattered, tantrums colorful hues
covenanting bright beacons, blinding lights
that danced throughout, a sinking fate
raptured, completely raptured, by charm
hence a certain, tolerance for grace hidden
beneath cold, noir divine, comical mischief
Written by Mrs Yolanda Joy Nicholsen
Phases
rainstorm, thunderbolt
in the desert
umbrella promise to protect us betrayed
a flash flood washed away our treasury empty –
into capital banks of self, less of -ish democrats.
lost, disillusioned
in the forest
broom’s vow to clean up and lead us to paradise
turned messy and blood gullies trail
the paths of the delusive retro-, I mean pro- gressives.
anxious, desperate
we must awake, wait for the second or first coming
of either the rhetorician or the labourer!
He had not dwelt there long,
he was a tenant
a traveler.
The stone walls carried no sound
to the outside,
but on the inside
every movement and whisper
was transmitted and amplified
through a matrix of fluting's,
gullies, pipes, and vents, etched
into the leaden masonry.
His room was a dry-walled cube.
He lived there quietly,
for even the closing of a drawer
or the tinkle of glass upon glass
seemed clamorous. The sounds
magnified.
He had not seen the other rooms,
the other tenants.
He had heard footsteps,
shuffling movements,
groans,
toilets flushing,
close sotto voce conversations
between lips and ears,
doors slamming.
After only days he moved on,
closing the thick front door
softly behind him.
Into the city street he stepped.
No one looked at him,
no one seemed to see him.
Afraid that he was alone in this
unknown world,
he tuned back to the house
but alas
it was no longer there.
The rain stopped,
Heavy bank of clouds remained,
Afternoon was dark until dusk,
No light to draw back the day,
A strong frost shock,
Gripping the land,
Unrelenting,
The trees fell silent,
Along the gullies and wet ditches,
A faint mist was rising,
Winter's last stand against spring,
The temperature descended,
The wood tightened against the cork,
As if the wasted wood might snap of the ground,
A fine crack froze over the dew pond,
The circle of the ice was finally closed.
Abyssal, abysmal, profound,
superficial, light, evident,
your eyes change color...
Cracks, gaps, ruptures,
labyrinths, anguishes, throat
your eyes confine my desires...
Precipices, cliffs, gullies
schisms, contractions, insights
your eyes sometimes interact...
Lovers, flirts, friends,
I forgive all this because
I love your eyes
and you... !
Born of snow on Berkshire Mountain,
winter’s beauty lies a sleeping.
Snow on snow in layers piling
Kept in place by nature’s freezer
When the voice of springtime whispers,
days are longer, air grows warmer.
Sleeping beauty starts her stirring,
melting, moving, freely flowing.
Berkshire weeping tears of labor,
water trickles through the channels,
left by previous birthed streamlets.
Merging, melding, gently, gliding.
First a trickle, weak and feeble.
Then like ski jets swiftly skimming,
over rocks and fallen timber,
downward dashing, gullies, gashing.
When the thunder starts to rumble,
And the clouds are rent asunder.
Raindrops pour as pails of water,
Causing stream to roar and thunder.
After months of Berkshire weeping,
Like a broken faucet flowing,
tears abate, the crying ceases.
Summer’s ending, streambed drying.
A day has come
because God brought it forth.
Creation reveals his
diamond-like worth
even though some people
fail to see.
Green blades of grass grow to cover the
hillside,
I wonder
just what is the purpose of these.
Kittens, stay safe
let your mom go explore.
Maybe later you'll join her, but
not before your eyes can be seen.
On the other side of the hill, a
pasture complete with
quality meat. A grass-fed cow
roams the gullies calling out to her calf. Enters the scene, a
steed with a cowboy atop.
This day surely will end
under skies tinged with warmth. A
veritable display of fireworks as the
weary sun collapses to bed.
Xerox this day, repeat again and again.
Yes, it finds me happy, perhaps I've found some
zen.
The path between myself and the distant man
twists and turns. There are gullies and ridges
hags and troughs, a hoary dusk.
We are converging. He has my hat and clothes,
my resemblance.
Once I miscalculated;
I was out on the trackless moors too late,
darkness fell
I had to lose myself to find myself.
The figure is waving, not in greeting but warning.
As we draw nearer the sky darkens,
suddenly he is gone.
Later I look from a dark window and wonder
which of us came home?
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