Buzz mosquito, buzz ineffectually
Cruel, bizarre and crudely placed
Your hatred stings but momentarily
Leaving only your buzz disgraced

Fixed with wings
We were made to fly
For one fine day
To command the sky
The wings won't last
They fade away
But we'll always have
This one fine day

Like birds we swoop
And then we soar
For this one fine day
There's nothing more
Than napping on clouds
And roaming the skies
Nibbling stolen pieces
Of departed sunrise

Breathing in sunshine
Chasing rainbow treasures
Riding the breeze
The ultimate pleasures
When the time comes
Our wings fade away
Leaving one sparkly feather
To remember this fine day

NCL August 2019

When it was all too much
And we needed someplace safe
To escape our failures and mistakes
The best place to cry
Was the sixth floor women's washroom

The stalls were large enough
To hold most afflictions of misery
The walls muffled the echoes
Giving privacy in a moment of distress
And the flourescent lights held back respectfully

Someone had set up a small basket
For anyone who needed refreshing
And then as women do
The offerings of comfort collected
And in this sterile place over time
Women made a safe and beautiful space
To recover until they were ready
To face the world again

When he is in the mood
My son will fill a bucket with berries,
Barely stopping for a taste.
He does not need help
After all, he is five years old,
Tall for his age, strong and determined.
His bucket will overflow before his hands falter.
Or he will run out of berries within reach.
And even then, he will gaze at the ones
Taunting him from high up in the bracken
And imagine flying up there to retrieve them
Or building a robot who can reach.
He will not notice scratches on his golden skin;
His hat will fall off, abandoned.
When the picking is done, buckets overloaded,
Only then will my boy turn to his berries.
He will eat them by the handful,
Staining not just the tips of his fingers,
Making the sounds of a happy bear cub
As he rolls around, content.

My daughter can find blackberries anywhere
Parks, paths, people’s lawns, on the sides of unlikely cliffs
No place is safe from her nose, her eyes, or her 6th sense.
She will reach, graceful and klutzy at the same time,
Stretching skinny arms to pluck berries one by one
Immediately consuming them
She is not rushed but she is efficient
She might take a break to chase a butterfly but she will return.
She is not so little anymore but still cannot be trusted to mind the bucket
As she will then stop picking altogether to guard her hoard poorly
Until she is found, face, hands and hair stained her favourite purple,
Twigs and blackberry remains tangled in her wild curls.
Her eyes, big and sweet and blue, seemingly guileless,
She would swear on unicorns and princesses,
On sparkles and batgirl, but not on her favourite stuffies,
that she has not been eating many berries at all.
And maybe many is hard to quantify for an almost four year old.


NCL September 2018

When the day comes

When the rainforest is burnt to none and they, for a dollar sum, stoop to petty catastrophe

When the oceans hold more plastic than water and it's too late for the dolphins to stage a coup

When the skies glow grey-orange with smoke and disappointment and each breath tastes of the same

When ever more radiation burns through; it's too much to hope we'll evolve superpowers - Oxygen Woman and the Amazing De-Plasticizer to the rescue

When the oceans rise and the land quakes in protest and from their tussles produce countless tsunami

When drought and flood escalate and tempests multiply; and there's no safe place left to live your life in ignorance

When we're almost all extinct; not that far away some think

When the end is unavoidable, will they see it then?

There's no insurance you can buy for the end of the world