Staying Home

Ten beautiful poems to help you feel calm and reassured.

A collection of ten poems to help you find strength

A collection of five poems to read before (or during!) a walk

All I can think about are those tiny feet, his first laugh, and how he surprised me one day with the word ‘red’. What a joy as they start to move, and speak and enjoy the world. What heartache when they feel hurt by it.

I had been strolling along, admiring the scenery, when the forest asked me to stop.

I was quite sure I was going crazy. For years I walked around talking to myself in my head. I know we all do this. But as well as the usual internal dialogue, I imagined not conversations so much, as monologues.

I don’t know how it will end. I know it will never end. All is life and death, famine and glut.

I could feel it, that feeling again. The same one I get each time. Not I hope I find something or maybe I’ll find something but rather, there is something.

Content in the dark, loving the feeling of being alone under the stars, the pull of sleep was strong.

Open your eyes.

The older we get, the harder it is to be surprised in this way. But when we are, the unknown unnamed stands out, sharp in relief and fine in detail. It is like a cut-out scene in a pop up book, curious and enchanting.

I wanted, and want still, what I can’t have. I want to sit by him while he paints.

What you experience instead is the fizzing aliveness of plants and animals, curiosity at how things naturally unfold, and magical combinations that we could never imagine nor contrive.

The kingfisher chooses a perch from which to call and be heard. I choose this perch when I need to listen.

I took lots of videos while at the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head. This photo was an accidental capture.

We miss so much beauty when fixated on the weeds, seeing only what we wish was not there.

When it comes to the garden, I want to be folded in, to fade in, to become part of it. I long to be—for a moment—place, not person.

I fell back in love and became more attached to the labyrinth than ever, right at the point of letting go.

Maybe this is a fairytale with a happy, only slightly macabre, ending.

It is in our nature to read things, we are born to read and find our meaning, I think again. I pause mid-step. On the path at my feet is a nest.

The in-between can be terrifying. Or it can be a quite marvellous space.

The place you call home has been holding and supporting life for all time. Today, it holds you.

It was bliss. Everything after that was quietly measured against how close to, or far from, that feeling it might take me. What was it? Where did it come from, where did it go, and how do I find it again?

To see stars that are very faint you need to avert your gaze. To see them, you don’t look straight at them. You pretend, oh so casually, to look elsewhere. You sneak up on them unawares. You side-eye them.

Feeling out of the step with the world is an uncomfortable thing.

Last evening I was called into the night by an owl

They were flying in every direction. In pairs and threes, groups of five or more. They go every which way, crossing paths, splitting off, groups coming together, parting and patterning the sky.

Run your hand over the hydrangea head. Only when it sounds papery is it ready to pick

Out walking, I stepped well away from the road when a car was coming. After the car passed I went to take a step, looked down and found this at my feet.