Time Flight

 

Of course when she was
younger she loved to brazen
through a shining helmet of
brassy auburn, tinging on fire.
It glowed and so did she, never
mind she was just a sociable
clerk at a thrift shop. She too
could save enough for a winter
trip to Florida. But time moves
on, her body thickened though
that mischievous grin still sparks.
Now she says she's too tired
to forge on. Her hair no longer
dyed that brash invitation to
flirt, nor is it now, at age 60
that grimly gruesome steel-grey
au naturel she so detests. This
time she chose midnight black
not to advance the admission
of youth's flight into the dark
corridors of age, but to defy it,
as she prepares for the next
scene in the engaging play
so inexorable in its predictability
we all lightly refer to as life
adrift in the passage of time.

 

Sanctuary

 

 

The trees bare as straw brooms
bleed bright yellow blazes
sharp counterpoint on grey beech.
Dark needles of conifers
comb the winter air
shoved by a bitter wind.
The snow is loosely sifted
glaringly bright under the winter sun
as we cross-tuft a pattern
striding snowshoed. The
silence echoes as we whisper
in the cathedral stillness of the wood
watch two deer panic
red rumps flicking white flags
dark droppings steaming in the snow.
They're still spooked by vague
ghosts of hunting incursions
in this game sanctuary.

     (We'd watched helplessly
     as scaups frantically
                      beat the air
     rising from a quiet autumn lake
     air thick with shot. Later
     looked down from protected heights
     as a deer veed another lake
     trying to escape the hunters
                finally standing
                      frozen in fear
     on the cusp of the lake
                a perfect target.)

They're forgetful in the summer
memory of terror dimmed
let us watch them browsing.
Yet it was just last summer
we discovered this same forest pathway
plush with fawn-coloured hair
yawning with the chalk-white
skull of an unwary deer.

 

 

Sunflower Smile

 

She is a bright spark of energy
and hope, purposefully
guiding the eyes of harried
shoppers to the table in the
store's large vestibule where a
transparent collection box sits
awaiting donations to the charity
of aiding those every community
has, the underprivileged in need.
She is suffused with the
enthusiasm of youth, bubbling 
effervescently with hope for the
future. Hair carefully coiffed,
eyes brimming with expectation
her smile as wide and brilliant
as a sun-drenched sunflower field
the temporarily unemployed
twenty-something has turned
her personable skills to community
volunteering, admits it is humbling.
How else to describe the mortifying
sensation of people determined
not to make note of her presence
curtly pushing past her smile, her
disarming plea-patter? She would
so much rather be working the
fashion industry in Toronto but
this, she wrinkles her neat little
nose in play, prepares her for
dealing with others, making light
of her mission and her efforts
informing her as they brush
sympathetically by that they
too are in need of assistance.

 

 

Ruin

Abbey Ruins

 

The wall stands
on the silent landscape
rough grey granite
drywall   no mortar
gluing its oneness
hints of a fireplace.

Now the underbrush intrudes
forest pushing back memory
birds loop the lonely air
and forest creatures
shelter under its shadow.

It could be the
ruins of Ilium
of a Minoan palace
or even Dresden. The
causes as diverse as
a wooden horse

              Santorini
or Allied bombers. This
wall speaks of the
inevitability of time
flux wrought by nature
by the nature of man.

 

 

Breaking The Fast

 

As dawn reaches its early
fingers of tentative light past
the dark sentinels of night
chickadees make their morning
pilgrimage to our bird feeder,
and a downy woodpecker picks
mightily at the suet cluster
while juncos gather the fallen
seed and a cardinal patiently
awaits his turn at the communal
avian feed. Later, drowsy-headed
squirrels make their querulous
appearance in the cold dawn
hours bypassing the bird feeder
for their very own feeding
pavilion even as a nuthatch
hangs above and the feisty
red squirrel, fierce in its
minuscule authority, arrogates
to itself disciplinary action
over its timorous black and
grey cousins so much larger
yet so much more passively
submissive among the orderly
slate of welcome daily visitors.

 

 

Close of Day

 

An aura of expectation hangs
on the atmosphere, or perhaps
it's only us, yet it seems
as though late afternoon
appears anxious to meet its
appointment with evening
too soon transforming from
the white brilliance of a sun
dappled snowy forest to a
long-shadowed, furtive woodscape.
As the temperature drops 
so too does the sun, hovering
on the horizon catching the
bare-limb canopy to set it afire
but briefly as dusk descends
and the moon assumes her
bright oval throne, and our
boots crunching on the ice
crystals overlaying snow, we
stride the forest pathways
toward home and warmth, 
our little winter-coated dog
trotting companionably beside.

 

 

Co-Existence

 

 

It is their natural environment
their habitat, into which we
intrude without so much as a
by-your-leave of arrogant
entitlement for we control
all we survey and they are
after all, only animals of the wild.
Our homes are built where once
they roamed unhampered by our
presence, setting boundaries
through which they may not 
venture for if they do we
designate the nuisance and
threats whose presence must 
be addressed by means foul.
Those creatures have no access
to means by which they may
solve the nuisance and danger
we represent through the
hazards we pose trespassing
on their territory, the homes
that nature has suited them for
and so the tensions of co-existence
favour the bipedal opposed-thumb
animals distressing all others.