National Dilemmas

 

  Photograph: Sombo Sombo/Alamy

In poverty-stricken countries of the world

 

which we may no longer refer to as Third World 

 
countries but rather make full use of the

 
euphemism 'emerging economies', there is one

 
inexhaustible natural resource the envy of 

 
First World economic nations; the growth

 
steady and reliable, of their populations where 

 
the natural increase grows and grows despite

 
privation, food scarcity, joblessness and lack 

 
of medical care and the unfortunate loss of life

 
accompanying those lacks. In those countries 

 
governed either by incompetents or a hierarchy

 
of privileged elites for whom nothing of concrete

 
value lacks, the great unwashed for whom

 
sanitation, potable water, basic foodstuffs, power

 
and health care remain beyond imagination it's 

 
live or perish as fortune rolls her dice, and  hope

 
is lost. Yet wealthy nations grapple with their

 
confounding statistics that emphasize population

 
replacement expectations remain mysteriously

 
misplaced for as the aged die, fewer are born to 

 
replace them. This, even as administrations enact

 
legislation and expend treasury to enhance

 
the prospect of child-bearing, offering measures

 
inconceivable to those others, even while

 
residents of wealthy nations sneer at their

 
subsidies, the child care provisions, the health

 
care, the paid parental leave, as insufficient

 
in depth and quantity as a persuasive gambit.

 

 

Settling Into Winter

 

Wickedly bad tempered of late
she has sent one of her acolytes
to vent his ill tempest upon us
simply to remind, lest we forget
what forces they are that obey
Nature, corresponding to our
frail-minded clinging to puny
humankind's feeble management.

That ill wind, in intense
intercourse with a tempestuously
plunging atmosphere, and a
side dalliance with those
battered, bruised clouds venting
vapour over the land
has us cringing in paroxysms
of mortal distaste.

Trees surrender to naked despair.
Fish dive deep and anxiously hover.
Birds make frantic haste
to leave this familiar space.
While insects burrow deep
to wait out the annual tantrum.

Creatures of the forest gather
what they may to make
themselves scarce as the
landscape inexorably alters. We
grimace at the discomfort of
increasing displays of distemper.

Cringe before her directed onslaughts
of frigid air, wild wind, icy sleet, rain
and snow. Like other animals
we wait out the angry funk.
Awaiting opportunity to resume
the ease of changeable
Nature's goodly graces. 

 

 

Unquestioned Faith

 

William Blake

What a conundrum it is that the human psyche

finds no rest within its spirit in the absence of

the recognition of faith in a spiritual and heavenly

instructor whose divine guidance resonates in 

the human soul with gratitude that such an

all-powerful spirit, one whose nature it is to 

permit the existence of all that is and to grant

humanity exceptional stewardship of all

creation as the centre of the universal being

of all that is and will ever be, favoured as they

are with the instruction to worship none other

for all are false posing as prophets claiming

kinship with the almighty one, of whom there

is none other. Peace and loving kindness the 

primary observation of this tender god in whose 

name and thunderously pious injunctions to

follow and bear witness bringing others to his 

celestial knee, in the process striking the terror 

of anger in no wise suppressed should human 

actions displease the spirit in whose name peace

and loving kindness is proffered to all, even the

misguided, choosing to abstain from serving 

god's will, who for their unfortunate choice must 

vacate life, for what the holy spirit has created

that same spirit can uncreate, with the avid

helpfulness of those of unquestioned verities.

 

 

Mistress of the Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gardens, muted of colour
form, texture, fragrance
are now a collapsed
architecture, delighting us
no longer as fall deepens
into garden-bleak winter.

Gone the thriving, brilliant
choreography, the boundless
exuberance of bulbs and tubers
bursting into flower, the shrubs
and fruit trees showering petals
transformed into luscious fruit.

The garden now is pallid
exhausted, its summer audition
long past, the chorus of blooms
extinguished, no encores as the
final departure of leafy canopy
has descended echoing dismay.

The curtain is prepared now to fall.
The last bow and curtsy executed
as nature asserts sovereignty.
Casually deflects assumptions our
efforts reflected ownership
of carefully plotted, nurtured
triumphant gardenscapes.

There is no perpetuity here, merely
the gardener's eccentricity in believing
she exerted control over the order of
her gardening efforts. A brief, illusory
delusion, a borrowed vision, a hallowed
trust now returned to nature
and winter's ascendancy.

 

Arming The Faithful

 

In a world obsessed with the wonders

of high tech, give some thought to the

preoccupation of Islam's ventures in faith

introducing to the world the advances

that can be made in asymmetrical

warfare with the use of low-tech and

no-tech, simply ingeniously using tools

at hand, beginning with tasking the devout

to prove the strength of their faith in jihad

with the ultimate sacrifice exalted in

the noble robes of martyrdom and heroism

to which end suicide vests become the

explosive devices of first choice followed

in haste by the simple medium of

improvised explosive devices as an

example, and for truly maximum impact

in the efficacy of holy wars astutely

diverting passenger jets as missiles 

aiming to strike symbolic high-rise 

edifices housing thousands of those

noncompliant non-believers as their just due

for insulting the Prophet. And during times

of high tension confronted by powerful

states whose enmity augers conventional

warfare their armaments well equipped

to extinguish the ambitions of conquest

full use of deadly missiles in planned

mass slaughter to send the world into

disbelief at the commission of war crimes

yet not seen as such by the perpetrators who

profess no responsibility for the carnage

and cast blame on those surreptitiously

assaulted by proxy militias on order

from none other than the sacred scripts

of a holy spirit whose disciples are legion.

 

The Dark Curtain of Night

 

This untouched forest is a gift to nearby urban

dwellers though most are oblivious of its

presence on the outskirts of a large metropolitan

city, preserved as a natural setting for wildlife

thanks to its geology, unwelcoming to the

plans of developers where nature has devised

a deep and long, winding ravine where

conifers and deciduous trees grow large and

plentiful and generations of nature lovers

have forged trails through the once-dense

underbrush absent now of grouse and pheasant

still visited by hawks and owls, those avian

hunters whose presence so alarms songbirds.

Deer are now seldom seen as the urban mass

has grown tighter around the nature preserve

but coyotes find there a perfect habitat teeming

with small furred wildlife blithely furnishing

nests with vulnerable offspring. The forest

interior is perpetually dim and fantastical

in winter, snugly comforted with layers of

snow -- and daylight hours short, dusk exerting

its presence in the low hum of murmurs and

sighs, the wind soughing through branches and

boughs, animals and birds settling down

awaiting the dark curtain of nightfall.

 

 

 

Tell Me This

 

If all the world's a stage, good bard and

we play out our lives in hopes and fears

the drama's on us, whether it be the

sadness imposed when ill fate becomes

us or the joy that ensues when good

fortune beams its best our way. We

aspire and trust, anticipate and forge

a future as best we can never knowing

the outcome as actors on life's stage.

So if life is a theatre of happenstance

in our waking hours what then is

sleep when our subconscious elevates

our minds to another dimension always

familiar, sometimes fraught and very

occasionally brimming with happy

intimates. To sleep, perchance to

dream, and we do, hoping that we may

bypass the demons haunting our psyches

in favour of the gentleness of love and

nostalgia in the understanding that life

is prelude to eternal dreams. Unless

of course dreams are the entry to life?

Tell me do, can we enjoy one lacking

the presence of the mysterious other?