Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:10:32 +1000WeeblyFri, 20 Feb 2026 22:41:39 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/the-low-placesWhen I feel I know nothing
When I feel both
Nothing and Everything
I go down
To the lowest parts of myself
I go down
To the lowest part of the river

They say that peace stirs
Most gracefully here

Where I can hear
My own heartbeat
And every note
That cicadas sing
With such polished clarity
That the confusing haze
Of my own life
Melts into sweet amber honey
That drips off tree branches
And meets river water
Like a gift from the gods

Feet planted firmly amidst
Glossy river stones
Stood amidst the quiet hum of life
Deep in the low parts of Everything
I see the sky watching over me
Feel a hand gently holding mine
And everything that stirs in my chest

​Watch leaves swim towards
Then away from me
And with them
My need to know
What happens next...]]>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:25:56 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/dawnThe time before sunrise
Draws me gently toward it
That quietest breath of morning
Singing to me like a white bellbird
With a song that dances quietly
Through the spiral of All Time

Air so full of potential
Wanting nothing
Save the quiet company
Of my troubled soul 

​We sit in silence
The sky and I
Moved only by lungs, heartbeat,
Clouds and breeze
As everything fills slowly
With sunlight
And my spirit fills slowly
With ease.]]>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:25:20 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/sunflowersThey say that when two souls
Who’ve always known each other
Meet for the first time
Everything stops
Even time itself

The depth of connection
Too strong for Life 
To keep on, keeping on 

The Poets have tried and 
Almost always failed
To describe this Love
For it really can only be felt

Something like the sky 
Returning to itself
Or the sun seeing its own shine
Or the heart feeling its own beat
Or the wind feeling its own breath

Something like seeds from the same tree
Traversing oceans over millennia 
Only to wash up next to one another
On the very same shore

Something like the youngest, most tender
Part of us being held in a way
It was never, yet always meant to, be held

Something about suffering 
And rugged self-reliance
Meeting its final resting place
So a softer way can be born

And the rightness permeates 
Every cell of your being 
And the love floods 
The totality of your heart

Until at some point
The pain comes knocking at your door
The ache of never having had this before
Of never being loved in this way
The settling for less
The mucky familiarity of harm
The fear of loss and losing yourself
The “what if this cannot last?”

And for awhile it seems 
You must drift apart
In order to return to this 
Thing that You Always Deserved

Oh the familiarity of Aloneness
Has an irresistible pull
As souls calibrate to 
The tender yet terrifying
Place of Real Love

They say that 
We’re drawn to those 
Who bring alive 
The parts in ourselves
That were never allowed 
To be born

Sun to seeds that have always 
Laid dormant beneath
Layers of pain and generational harm
When those shoots see
Their first light 
It can feel too blinding
The dark quietness of being 
Unseen pulls us back down, down, down

But when I sit on the balcony
In the soft light of dawn
The sky speaks to me

She reminds me how 
The first balm on a wound stings 
Oh it stings So Much 
That you curse the balm
And wish you’d never found it

She reminds me 
How much healing can hurt

They say that when two souls
Meet for the first time
The sky explodes
And tries to push you apart

But if you can close your eyes and remember
How the world stands still when you hold each other
How the shoots eventually grow into sunflowers, 
Facing, tall and proud, the light that they 
Were never allowed 

And despite war, and suffering,
And the inevitability of pain
You have each other

But most of all
In this tender, loving place
You finally have yourself 
Whole, fully loved and always always free.]]>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:23:25 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/beautiful-thoughtsMy first poem breathed herself through me 
When I was just six years old
Soft faced and bright eyed
I hardly knew that many words then
Yet she didn’t seem to care
Like the first time your lover kisses you
It was everything - silent, loud, electric, eternal. 

You know how beautiful thoughts 
Pass through you
But sometimes you just can’t hold them
Maybe you’re too busy waiting in line 
For someone to tell you to go to another line
Or on hold to a tune that you wished you never had to hear
Or maybe there’s just too much pain inside 
For them to even safely land.

Dyou ever feel your life 
Should really be set to music 
And the whole world
Is watching you and waiting for you
To Say something
Like how fucking magnificent and weird is being a human?! 

Or like one part of you 
Wants to be held for the longest time
While another wants everyone to
Get The Fuck Away?! 

Some times I wish I didn’t know 
About the world 
So I didn’t feel the need 
To save it

Need someone to tell me - 
You can’t save it anyway 
So please, let yourself
Be a gardener

Or be still 
So you can catch the thoughts
That want to land in you 
And write poems 
That help the world save itself 

But then she keeps creeping back
Like a stone in the lowest part of a river
Growing heavier and larger in the depth of my soul 
Pulling me down to a Place 
Where I can never forget… 
Moral Duty

Oh, Moral Duty, yes!
I feel you, but sometimes 
I just want to Dance!

To scream and to cry
And to run through the mountains 
Like you had never met me nor touched me so young
Like I never knew your name or felt your stare

Out in the paddock beneath heavy moonlight
I stopped in my tracks 
And wept as I realised 
That the best and the worst of Everything
Will never be rendered
Never really ever wholly captured in its
Beautiful Tragic Essence

Think about that
Words can’t hold 
The Full profundity 
Of the human experience
Not even poetry

And I sat
And I cried
In a way that
Can never be described

And Duty made her bed
As the Tao looked on
Taking notes in its ancient note book
And the moon held the heaviness
And the air stood still
As beautiful thoughts quietly 
Filled up the sky.
]]>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:22:44 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/cosmosSome days I wish my mind
Was a cave, not the cosmos
Its naked rawness seems to know no end

Tentacles to the trillion unspoken vibrations
That exist in all the spaces in between
Cataloguing every item 
On every supermarket shelf
Every foot step on every side walk
Hearing the cries of
Faceless beings that never had a name

Have you ever sat in a room
And listened to the sound of
All the heartbeats?
Or pretended this was all a big joke

Wandered through a city and 
Imagined every square of land 
Before All This?

I wonder what we all look like 
From the Karman line
Or what it might feel like
If we didn’t know about climate change
Or war, or religion, or time?

I can’t see people without seeing 
Them as babies, or old people, or angels
Can’t feel things without colour or sound

Like how sorrow drips 81 types of dark blue
To minute 1:41 of Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight”
Just where the violas come in

Do you ever wake in the middle of the night
To the screams of the children in Gaza
And the sound of the earth crying?

Then cover your ears and your eyes 
And your mouth 
Till all you can hear 
Is the sound of your heart 
And your breath
And all you can feel 
Is tears dripping 
Down your soft, raw face.]]>Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:19:47 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/another-placeOut beyond the horizons 
of This Place 
Is Another Place
I’ll take you there

The gentle emptiness that visits you right before sleep 
Mixed with the softest awe of a midnight sky 
Time that has no edges
Love that knows no bounds

To be held in all of your personhood
To be known by all of your names

The breeze here moves so softly 
You’d barely know it was real 
Memories and heartbeats
Mix with dreaming and teardrops

​Standing here beside you
I love you 
For all that you are 
All that you were
And all that you ever will be]]>Sun, 30 Nov 2025 13:00:00 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/rainbowsI was always a he
Before I was a she
Shaved head
Baggy pants
Fire in chest
So full of Knowing
No imagination could
Have put it there


And I don’t under stand it
But I do stand inside it
As every minute
My body tries to
Remind me of
This truth about itself


Sometimes
It’s a whisper
Sometimes
A scream
Sometimes
It’s a pain
So fucking bad
It could destroy you


Sometimes
It’s holding onto
An image of my
Eighty year old self
Even when so much
Of me can’t imagine
Ever getting there


They say
That healing in the present
Travels seven generations back
And seven generations forward
I like that :)


So sometimes
I can hear it singing
To that child
Who couldn’t bear
To see themselves
In the mirror
About a time
Not so long from now
When everyone
Is loved
For throwing
their masks
In the fire


And society shrieks
And my mind fills
With Fears
And the quiet hum
Of Not Understanding
And furrowed brows
Stirs the distant Knowing
That once breathed
Feeling through
My three year old chest


That to live
Means to
Listen to who
We knew we were
Before the ideas
Of who we couldn’t be
Were planted
Deep inside us


To strap rainbows
To our chests and
Walk out into the
Moonlit night
Knowing we
Are and
Always will be
Magnificent


I was always a he
Before I was a she
And I was always
Just me
Before all of that
]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2025 02:06:13 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/stillnessYou know that feeling
Of stillness
That can hold
Anything

She visits me often
These days

As the world heaves
And seasons turn
The stillnesss stills

​Like a gift from some
Non-religious heaven
Perhaps nothingness
Is Everything.
]]>Mon, 22 Sep 2025 02:05:04 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/i-wake-at-4I wake at 4
To the sounds
Of the earth crying

​Poetry brewing
Like the day’s
First cup of tea

A single eagle
Circles silently
The final chapters of
A blackened night sky

The sea floor bubbles
As steam rises
From pavements
And parking lots

Rain drops fall
On the surface of
A midnight blue sea

Tears returning
To whence they came

Soon, sunrise
Will make dry
Of everything

Another day of
Trying to Make Sense
Working
While wondering

I listen to my heart beat
Feel the whisper of my breath
Trace the fine grain of my palms
Taste the salt of tears on
My just-woke cheeks

​And let us be held
By the poetry of it all]]>Tue, 16 Sep 2025 09:42:44 GMThttps://www.charliebwood.com/home/sycamore-seedsThis Spring,
A sycamore tree
Taught me
That sometimes
To love, is to let go

I watched its seeds
Blow far and free
To places
Where no seed’s light
Could make shadows
Of any other

That sycamore tree
Taught me
To be still
With the love
And the pain
Of this indescribability

The way, in the dead of night
The heart tugs at Reunion
Yet the soul knows
The wisdom of Separation

Piano notes tinkle distantly
Tears trickle down cheeks
Candles burn their final wax
Children leave parents
Parents leave children
Geese fly in V-formations
On mystery lilac skies

And the sycamore tree
Just breathes
As its seeds
Let each other go
With love]]>