FOTOULA REYNOLDS - POEMS

Fotoula Reynolds is an author of poetry. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, Australia. She says that living in the hills is a writer’s dream, she is in awe of the inspirational and natural spaces that exists in her community. She began writing poetry in 2015 and has published her second book titled: Silhouettes (2019). Her first book: The sanctuary of my garden was published in 2018.
Her work is published in e-zines, journals, reviews and anthologies. 

​Home is nowhere

​She was so broken
It hurt to look in her direction
Iron cobwebs constricted her chest
Heart beat murmured - breathless
A desperate shadow formed
In the alleyway of a frightened
Brick wall tells all running scared
A smack in the head - out cold
Two years of yesterdays betrayed
Over the edge of night seeds lie asleep
Beneath a stretch of cracking buildings
Scattered words fly from fragile emptiness
Voices heard burned into stone skies
Promises dried up sounds of truth
Sleeping below the ground echoes

Under the ash of bone breaks the day

You never get used to it

The annual commute
Watching people wasted
In many untold time
And murmured cries
I return to the bed
Of hard familiarity
Faking my smiles
Inside outpatients
Music disturbs me
Jack-hammered
Clearing head space
Breathing abnormal
Wrap my cold skin
Tunnel wind freeze
Movement denied
Strictly prohibited
Sophisticated results
Strong magnetic pull
Head-rest hurts
Face-guard lowers
A sixty minute photo shoot
Locked in suck it up
A higher love found me
It was inside the MRI machine

​

​Accent

My ears delight
In melodic tones
Proud and privileged
To hear two countries
Colliding in speech
English and my mother’s
Mother tongue give me
Meaning as I am taken to
Two different worlds
So I may take ownership
Of my offspring voice
My plain accent
Mimics hers, it is a
Natural response
A yearning to follow
To feel her exotic
Sound makes me whole
Her accented words give
A uniqueness to the way
She tells her stories of
What it is like to be a
Migrant reaching for
The ultimate honour
Of citizenship
Pain and sorrow becomes
Unburied when spoken
With a foreign accent
I know who you are, mum
You kept true to yourself
And for that I commend
You and I aspire to be
A courageous lioness
With a roar that exudes
My second-generation
European blood-connection
Thanks, dear mum
For your mouth
That carries your
Combined love of
Greece and Australia ​

​Traces

In the mansion
Dust settles and
Thickly covers
Stories and secrets
Of a bygone era
The violin tells
The cello plays
The piano cries
Lonely song sheets
Lie under dry leaves
While the timber
Floorboards creek
To the sounds of
Aliveness where
In their music
Life once lived
Paint peels and curls
Art deco beauty fades
Knitting needles on
The empty couch
Abandoned forever
Magnanimous windows
Invite the glorious sun
To warm and brighten
A family’s sitting room
It’s afternoon tea time
Simple pleasures exist
And walls do speak
In the Shire of Sherbrook
Where the hills whisper
An estate by a road
Lined with Beech trees
Begs you to listen
To a history so rich
​

​Kairos

What is a poem
But the perfect
Delicate and opportune
Moment of words
In all their eutony
To be released
Into a god-like sky
Where a crucial
Creative atmosphere
Breathes rightness of time ​