Time and Again

Bruised by yet another in an endless
string of disappointments she feels her
confidence cruelly shaken, but remains
defiantly undaunted. Is it futile to seek
a companion to share life with, to have
an open and trusting mind that as you give
so will your emotional investment be
returned? That logical formula has been
found lacking, for there is no logic
inherent in emotions and responses.

One race, separated and mysterious by
virtue of gender-sensibilities. The view,
the response, the need and the balance of
the alliance sits uneasily upon the gender
values, leavened with human eccentricities,
the search for meaning as opposed to the
trite and shallow path of self-absorption
the egoistic id, failing the hopeful other.

They stand like stone dolmens in her
memory, each in their turn evoking a
voiceless reproach that her investment was
too little valued, her offering taken and
nothing of lasting value exchanged. No
reason not to think that there is, somewhere
one who searches as she does, and their
paths may some day converge...

No reason but the acquired pain of too
many encounters lacking commitment
one after the weary other. The evanescent
promise never fulfilled; in its place abuse
of trust and feelings and need. So she nurses
her hurt and bruised expectations, lavishes
love on companion pets and envies the
steady reliability of her aged parents'
traditional covenant of love and support. 

 

 

Simply Put: Why?

 

A three-lettered query, simple in its
surface innocence, but complex in its
need to know, nuanced with an underlay
of demand on the sensibilities. Acutely
humanly needful of thoughtful introspection
and response. Why, he asks, the sentence
forwarded for contemplation, comprised
of a single word. The most meaningful
plaint in human communication, but
sans context, an arcane conundrum.

There is an inhuman distance of vast
geography separating us, yet our connection
is managed through the ether, permitting
those faceless, voiceless masses of which we
are two, to meet. Brief contact, one mind
reaching another, past language, culture and
history to find a common human interest.
You grope for those to share your search
for meaning, and there am I, responding.

No, your malady is not mine, but my
emotional grasp of its life-destructive
powers require no great stretch of the
imagination; humans are imbued with the
capacity to care for the plight of an
unfortunate stranger. Call it empathy
compassion, a remote tenderness of
vision and responsibility as an uncomplicated
gesture, person-to person, unseen, unmet.

Your language is not my language, so it
must require quite the effort, a huge
difficulty for you to marshall your thoughts
transcribe and send them on their way through
the miracle of telecommunications circling the
atmosphere, tickling our awareness of one
another. Messages of enquiry, attempting
to solve the riddle of the deeply rooted
covenant of the spirit, to respond to need.

Your insistent need to know: But why, then?
resonates and saddens, it does not elevate
the discourse because you will not accept
the simple act of humanity, obsessed by a
response you will not dredge from me
invested yet with the belief that good exists
somewhere deep within, and sometimes
we must defer to that impulsive instinct. 

 

As Only a Mother Can

Of all the measures of love and concern
mothers and grandmothers demonstrate
the epitome in their deep devotion to their
offsprings' well-being through care, tactile
reach and nurturing the mind and body
with skill and practicality. From the homely
admonishments to dress for the weather
to instilling confidence in an uncertain mind
and spurring charges to excel in life's challenges
then nursing ill loved ones to a healthy outcome
who could be better trusted to care and
conviction surmounting life's adversities?

The emotional warmth and comfort of the
hovering presence surpasses legend. The
presence, the trust and the response are
real and dependable. The mother sees the
child in the mature adult first and foremost,
sometimes discomfittingly inappropriately
but with respect, the status is permanent
not given to reversibility. The final test of
time remains memory of the table and food
prepared and presented, as only a mother can. 

 

 

City Sketch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The defining features of this northern city,
seat of government of a great land; two historic
waterways, the Rideau Canal, beloved now of
pleasure crafters, and the mighty Ottawa River
of lumbering legend, distinguish this place, with
the Gatineau Hills a background study of this
geography whose organic natural display
boasts the rugged beauty and abundant natural
resources of the country itself. The river spans
its hearty width between two provinces with
their language barriers and cultural solitudes.

This too is a version of heritage handed
down through the centuries. Snow squalls erupt
on the horizon dropping an ephemeral vision of
fantasy over the landscape. The river suddenly
reflects the winter sun's luminous orb; prevailing
icy north wind rendering it impotent to warmth.
Gulls still coast above the rumbled-grey waters,
and a fastness of Canada geese ride the wavy
crests, immune to the frigid atmosphere
on the cusp of crusting into implacable ice.

The Parliament buildings stand stony-grey,
sentries of a democratic federation in this vast
land, stretching from sea .. to sea .. to sea. Where
First Nations people of this land still voice their
unaltered grievances, hoarse from centuries of
repetitive plaints, in living proof and illustration
that to the bold, the interlopers, the advanced and
the powerful in numbers and intent, inevitably
go the spoils and in a spirit of generosity, justice
in discrete measure is now and then meted out.

This city, barely removed from the rawness of
surrounding nature, the geological features of
a vast fertile valley on the cusp of the Canadian
Shield, became like the country, an encyclopedic
display of the faces and voices of the world,
gathered in an endless search by global migrants
for freedom and advantage, drawing on an exotic
display diluting the origins of its nativist culture
in replacement of its Euro-centered spirit.

It is as it is, a compendium of experiences,
traditions and ethnic stirrings. Restively asserting
and demanding and infiltrating and perhaps even
undeniably enriching in a stewing pot-luck of
human endurance, hope and aspirations to
succeed where destiny seemed to lead to despair.
This city, modest yet tinctured with a degree
of bravado in its history, art and architecture
remains distinct, a construct of what we, in our
need, have deemed it must be to reflect our
entitled needs as spirited and proud Canadians. 

 

Transformed, Again

 

A dark gloom has settled over the landscape.
Not the deeply cushioned dark of night, however.
This represents the shuttering of day's light, by
an approaching storm. This is also not an
oppressive gloom approaching. Merely the
winter sky dressing itself from coquettish
blue to an elegant charcoal with silver trim
which simply has eclipsed the ephemeral
golden splendour of the late-morning sun.

White begins to overtake the slate grey and
the great bowl of the sky has once again been
altered, changing costume, as glittering flakes
begin their lazy, spiralling ascent, stippling the
atmosphere with gleaming clusters of frozen
stars.  The trees in the forest preen in proud
display, their limbs and branches fuzzed with
white appeal, like debutantes in pristine white
furbelowed frills; apparel suitable for the ball.

The diaphanous veil of fetching white glitters
and gleams in tantalizing points of light as
the sun limns the edges of scalloped clouds.
Chickadees greet a new season's advance
excitedly chattering, bouncing within the
confines of hemlock, spruce and cedar bowers.
The air is redolent of the sharp familiar fragrance
of falling snow; the wind, briskly respectful
nudging it into corners and shy crevices.

The swiftly-running creek, swollen with
overnight freezing rain, resembles a long,
winding black mirror, hurrying beyond the
byways of the woodland heights in its journey
beyond, to longer, welcoming bodies, not yet
prepared for transformation to a river of silver
ice under which aquatic creatures pursue
their imperturbable cycle of life's journey. 

 

 

The Best of Times

 

Their time, that of suspense and surprise
and exhilarating discovery, of friendship
and music and dance and a rapidly growing
confidence in their futures as they advanced
into their teens and beyond, was the time
she, a small dark-haired and -eyed girl marked
him out for pursuit, recognizing him from
her restless dreams' pre-introduction.

Little aware, he readily allowed himself
to be swept along by her exuberance
and growing attachment. No more than
children really, pairing on a dance floor
on conversational agreements and
eventually secret trysts. All of which
led to years of companionship maturing
into a passionate yearning for more.

A state soon enough achieved, fulfilling
the longing for that complete and
absolute binary finality, two souls
revolving about one another in perpetuity.

They have pursued that destined brace
ever since, rarely looking back, always
consumed with their symbiotic present
satisfying each the other's needs and desires
confident of the future, that it would reflect
the grace and surety their linked lives shared.

The friends evaporated into the past,
but music and joy in life yet resonate
and the links that bind them remain firm
and fast. Long-past memories dredged
more often now, but the fondness is for
the present, the confidence future-firm. 

 

 

 

Intermission

 

 

Stacked billowing clouds, sooty understoried
and luminous silver above, are driven
relentlessly through the deep cauldron of
the roiling sky. Finally the rain punctuating
the quiet stillness of late autumn has come to
a relieving halt. A murder of crows hurl
hoarse invective, tangling the humid
atmosphere with sodden ebony wings.

The gnarled old pine trees drip incessantly
as though consumed by an unassuagable
grief. They have no reason to mourn, for
this year they have produced a vast
abundance of cones. It is the absence of
pomegranate-bright candles on autumn
sumacs that confuses the ritualized display
of nature's fecund purpose this season.

The foot of an elderly yellow birch glows
fiercely fluorescent-green, the moss freshly
washed and strangely, vividly illuminated
in the wanly eerie light. Over the mud-rich
waters of the ravine lingers a veil of mist,
and the sharp odour of swamp gas. The
screech of a hawk circling above penetrates
the softly serene silence of the afternoon.

The conspiracy between the ravening wind
determined in its powerful mastery over all
other climatic elements offers the waiting
sun a brief reprieve from obscurity. Suddenly,
warmth floods the environment and a softly
golden sheen is painted on the glossy trunks of
poplars and birch, revealing the nuanced
richness of the perfectly drenched arras.