Women’s Ink

Giving Women Writers a Voice

The Magazine of The Society of Women Writers NSW Inc. 

Celebrating 100 years 1925 –2025

Autumn/ March

Firstly thank you to our new editor Jan Conway for this edition Of Women’s Ink .  This is our year of celebration  for our centenary,  which was launched on Wednesday 12th March in the Dixon Room in the State Library and afterwards at 4pm in the afternoon as members and guests we gathered  at the State Library NSW Rooftop Bar where with a drink and nibbles in hand , we enjoyed good company , good talk and the unique stunning sunset view across the Sydney skyline and Harbour.

I am honoured to have two of my new poems published in The Women’s Ink

Here is an update of my published poem  called Park Bench

Park bench

Solid – something apart 
a grassy island in a tremulous sea, 
a soliloquy in a play. 

Something solitary here
a lighthouse set on rugged rock
or a heron solo in the wrack. 

It proclaims its place
weather-worn
wrinkled, venerable, 

a crone with many a story to tell.
  It tempts pause, take time out, 
look about.

How many have rested here
listened to the brush of grasses
found a full-stop moment  

amidst the shifting light?

Colleen

The Woman

She steps out into the night, not unlike this one 
that beckons me away from realities of computer
and tv, away from lights of the room
into quiet of dark wrapping
its calm around me. Her stepping out
is darker, with noise unfamiliar and harsh 
even as the night may be her protector.
It is the same moonless night with few shadows.

I wonder at the stars, their rare lace, displayed
on a navy cushion. Does she glance up? 
Her ground is unstable. She steps out 
on a mission, balancing two containers.
Her children? I will never know, though 
they would be much like my own. Let her 
quench their thirst. Let her not meet trouble.
Let her return to them hidden in the rubble.

Colleen Keating