Category: Poems

I am the Blue of my Mother’s Eyes

I am the songs that my mother sang to me the dust of Coty powder on her nose, cheek and chin the peach lipstick imprints on the paper hankie that she threw with panache into the nearest waste bin I am the softness of my mother’s favourite sweater the way her chiffon scarf wafted in […]

Forgiveness

In the industrial hinterland, stacks belch blue flares, stinking clouds mushroom from smoking fires and orange aureoles radiate and redden the sky of our environmental Armageddon. Will chimneys and factories ever disappear? Will Nature fill the voids of mining year on year? Will a time come when a different kind of steam evaporates across the […]

Fifth of July

I remember your birthdays as always sunny, with an occasional shower, maybe, but I only ever picture you with golden shimmers. Your smiles started as honeyed glimmers reflected in your sky-blue eyes, rapt with homemade gifts, so badly wrapped. Once, we took you to a restaurant; inside was candlelit while summer blazed outside. Tipsy with […]

Chalk Marks, Bears and What Lay Beneath

When I was a child the pavementwas a canvas, a joyful defacement:I made colourful chalk marks on the grey,a street artist, until the rain cameand washed them away.Hopscotch boxes led my feetacross the concreteand cracks warned of bearswaiting to eat meif I didn’t stay in the squares.I was curious about what laybeneath the heavy grey;grass […]