Sunburnt Speculations

Meet Yehuda bar Sabas It is Day 15 in Lent 2025 and our chief character, Yehuda bar Sabbas is beginning to emerge. Here is a first impression of him, which I have had to ask AI (DALL·E), to prepare, directed and refined through an iterative process with ChatGPT, as I am no artist! It’s a Continue reading

I took the headlines to God and asked, “Tell me, please God, is this ‘Genocide’? I need to know.” And God replied, “That word is of your law. You only need to know that my Word is Love.” Trembling, I whispered, “Is this Love?” I no longer wonder whether the horrors we see unfolding daily Continue reading

As a writing exercise, I had to write a poem about poetry. Here’s my attempt. Bundle up the ripened words.Prove them with a finger pad strike, held against your ear. Cut and crush. Tumble them into the vat.The sweet and firm; good and true; pretty and rough. Shake and settle. Fit the press. Turn the Continue reading

My hand is drawn into the tension between what I dare to imagine and what I think. It’s a complicated space, where anything is possible. It takes practiced courage to reach in and pull something out – and it is better than I dreamt because I have pulled it into being. Continue reading

In which we meet Hilary Ryder-Barnes, and trouble comes in fours… maybe fives! Hilary Ryder-Barnes, successful forty-something temp agency owner, had worked hard to build her staffing agency. She was proud of what she had achieved, and with good cause. Alone in the lift, she took a moment to apply a few well-practised touches to her Continue reading

“Winter now And cradling trees reveal the secret nests of summer birds.” This photo was taken somewhere in Hobart, Tasmania. I’m thinking that we must have been out walking on Queen’s Domain, overlooking the Derwent Estury. It was the starkness of the Winter sky, and the crows’ nests which you might be able to see Continue reading

In 2017, Colleen and I moved from Hobart to Melbourne. We were living in Richmond, Tigerland! At about that time, I came across a wonderful Twitter account, @121_words and began to experiment with writing some twelve-word stories, which, now that I look back at them, were a reflection of how we were adapting to our Continue reading

I think Moonshadow might love me. Not in the way she loves Midnight, the strong, glossy male, her life mate. But there is a softness in her regard of me, an almost imperceptible relaxing in her alertness around me, and a gentleness in her bright eye.  All the crows round here are Torresian crows. They Continue reading