Well I'm not sure what you would call this - cruel irony, maybe.

The day after this piece was published, my son (the one who was in the same class in primary school as the boy in this poem) was involved in a serious car accident. Just like the boy in the poem, it's a miracle my son survived.

Tragically, his accident lead to a second accident in which a good Samaritan - a woman the same age as me - stopped to help my son and in the process of crossing lanes to get to my son, was struck…

Poetry | Narrative Free Verse

She was an acquaintance
too bristly to be a friend of mine
but we had things in common
and children by our sides

It was her fault
that her elder boy
was fighting for his life
She should have waited
to make the turn
the truck had no time to stop

I can’t explain why it was
except to say I was called
by something much bigger
than my meagre self
to extend a steady hand
of nothing else but help

And so I did

For months and months
I cooked and called
and stayed and prayed
as often as I could
All to…

#WriteHere Prompt Week 4 | Them Not Me | Prose Poem

It was the tongue that gave her away. The quick flick of pink. Swiping the corner of her mouth. Mid-sentence. There it was. Flick-swipe. And again. Flick-swipe. A facial tic or a snake? Either way, most distracting. High alert.

She was new to her job. An unknown quantity. I was the trusty, long-time, hard-working kelpie taking care of the extra-care lambs. We were meant to work as a team. I needed her to do her job well so I could get on doing mine. I went out of my way to coach, teach and train. She had no clue of…

Poetry prompt day 17 | Go for it

Ambition, delusion, fantasy
pie-in-the-sky dreaming gone mad!
Stop it right there, you dingbat!
Don’t you know you’ve gone way overboard?
Those things can never be yours
What makes you think that they can?
Come on, get a grip of yourself
Have you forgotten who it is that you are?
You’re plain-Jane ordinary
like pea ’n’ ham soup from a can
Forget about those fancy aspirations
they’re out-of-reach on some faraway star

Oh, to shut down the negative self-talk
that annoying voice in my head
that tells me I’m not good enough
and I’ll never make my dream real
the one that sees me a…

#Writehere Prompt Week 3 | Apology | Poetry

Don’t get me wrong
I’m not whinging
not for myself anyway
I’m here being
a voice for the masses,
north to south, east to west
round and round
when I say -
Can we please have an apology?
One that feels real and sincere;
no spin-doctor gibberish
but something that speaks
of accountability
An apology to each one and all
for our lives dispossessed
tipped upside-down
smashed and beaten,
and lest we forget
those gone forever
their voices muted
in death’s finality

Who let the woo-woo
out of Wuhan?
We all have a right
to know now
NOW
not in 50 years
or whenever,
but here in…

Poetry Prompt Day 16 | Free Verse | Perspective

What does it mean to be a hero?
It’s a question I had to ask myself;
the naïve me of way back then
not the wiser me of now.

A hero is someone famous
and sometimes wears a cape
That’s what my teachers told me
and they always got things right.
Naïve me let myself believe them
but life was opening my eyes
and so I came to see
that my teachers had it wrong;
my perspective was all skewed —
I must define hero for myself
and have a different attitude.

A hero is not an idol,
A belle upon…

Poetry Prompt | Green

We sit immersed in greenery
wondrous at Nature’s tones and shades
The magic of chlorophyll
incanting mint to moss to jade

© Carolyn Hastings 2021

There are literally thousands, if not millions, of different shades of green in nature. The actual number is arbitrary because color is a function of perception, and everyone perceives colours in their own way — think red-green color blindness.

Perhaps more to the point are the contrasts we perceive between the shades and tones of a color. The human eye, as it turns out, can distinguish between more shades of green than any other color…