Day: April 9, 2022

We leave this morning for an adventure into the Western Cape. As we head out of town we will be saying goodbye to: A herd of goats in Graeme Street, crossing the road from a private school to test out the lawns further down on the Rhodes University campus. The Urban Herd of cattle making…

For Paul Brookes’ April poetry challenge, a poem inspired by Gaynor Kane’s photo of the round tower on Devenish County Fermanagh. Round towers Do they remember,the lochs and glens,the thud of heavy feet? Are the stony strands still scoredby the keels of dragon ships,rushed slender as sword bladesout of the pull of the waves? Sometimes,…

Stars weep for the fallen rainbow, lost beyond the twinkles of the night sky… Travelling light years through the infinite cosmos, Stars weep. image from google/ poetry copyright neha 2022 Napowrimo #Day 6 – Weep

My 2ndGarland Cinquain I’d float past the Kármán line, into outer space past the Milky Way’s dark matter unseen vacuum without friction leaves stars and planets free to travel along their orbits fluid plasma low density between vast galaxies of hydrogen and helium glacial up there observing the visible universe through foam of spongy filaments…

Previously on “War and peace”, from my great-grandfather Élie Martin to my great-uncle Philippe Onraët, an account of the family members who went to war, from the Chinese-French war of the 19th century to WWI… This post will deal with WWII onwards. (All images: family archives) 1939, Rwanda-Urundi, East Africa, my uncle Gérard Leclerc was…

March is such a tease. One day it’s 50-F degrees and you’re outside with jacket unbuttoned. The next, there is seven inches of snow on the ground and you’re scraping ice off the windshield…again. Daylight lengthens, blackbirds reappear, but that’s pretty much it for evidence of a changing season. What really shifts in March is…

Pakistan is an unlikely dream destination for people but it was mine. Like anyone from a diaspora community, there is always a curiosity- if not a longing- to visit the birthplace of your culture.  Once India introduced their simple eVisa system, multiple visits to India ensued for me. Yet, I still hankered to visit Pakistan…

Pakistani Women have evolved in recent years from stay at home wives, mothers and daughters to working women. Previously, when I was growing up, the acceptable ( by our society ) professions for girls were medicine ( Doctor) and teaching. But now the world has opened up for them. They can go to any profession…

When you clean your weaponWhen time and again, you clean your weaponWhen you rub strong-smelling oils into your weaponAnd shield it from the rain with your own bodyWhen you swaddle it like a babyEven though you’ve never swaddled a baby before —You’re only nineteen, no baby, no wife —The weapon becomes your only kinYou and…

You are facing gargantuan odds against the greedy Putinesque determination to have you, to take you, to force you against your will, and that is now threatening the use of nuclear weapons. But you have united fiercely against him and are holding out. There’s not much I can practically do for you, but today I…