The Experiment

 

 

Perhaps the covenant was one that nature

herself undertook -- to bestow upon one tribe

attributes of vision, curiosity, capability and

intelligence, apportioning to another envy

covetousness and anger -- in unbridled curiosity

pure and unsullied by compassion, utterly

indifferent to the outcome, focused solely on

the strengths of endurance and the lengths of

endowments each would develop, deploy and 

exemplify, she preferentially endorsing neither 

in her indifference and neither was she inspired

to conclude the experiment, as a minor diversion

and just as certain it is that the vast reaches of 

the universe will steadily expand so too do the

results of this micro-lens in human diversity

of unequal, disproportionate apportioning roil

the world offending the spirit of commonality

with the presence of one tribe's success in 

revealing its own sensitivity to creative science

the other its viral defence of hostile resistance to

acknowledging the superiority of exceptionalism.

 

 

Winter Gift

 

The early morning sun cast aside the last

vestiges of night lurking in tight corners

allowing the first glimmers of dawn to create

suspense, then fully illuminated the overnight

landscape, gleaming and glimmering below

in a breath-catching scintillation of diamond

clustered skeins of snow soft and bouffant

comforting the late November forest for its

pitiable loss of leaf mass, the disappearance

of bracken on the forest floor, dispensing its

incomparable decor over the forest canopy

shielding from critical eye the discarded matter

brown and desiccated in exchange for the

brilliance of a heavenly gift delivered to last

long winter months where ferns and wildflowers

slumber to be reawakened in spring when the

geese now flying overhead calling their goodbyes

return in reverse migration and the snowpack

melts irrigating the forest floor and the raging

raceways that will welcome returning wildfowl.

 

 

Worlds Within Worlds

  

They are so proudly distinctly different

from all others surrounding them clutching

their faith to their hearts, wearing those hearts

so visibly in long black flowing robes the

women concealing themselves from unauthorized

gaze, the community cloistered forbidding its

members communion with others lest they and

their community be tainted by the commonality

of the surrounding culture, theirs dedicated to

one on high and none other, certainly not to the

specious authority of any government as they

declare themselves immune from laws and

regulations meant for others while they exclude

themselves with the riposte that God alone

informs their action by his ineffable judgement 

as they defy instructions broadcast to inform 

the public of measures to be taken by all in the

hopes of staving off a deadly malevolent virus

from exacting ever greater punishment on human

life. Their piety the talisman the virus shrinks from.

 

 

The Winter Sun

 

 

As long as there have been sentient creatures 

awe and adulation, and the timid instinct to

recognize the power and dependence exerted

on the appearance of that ancient orb

that greets us every morning and temporarily

leaves us in the evening -- lighting and warming

our days from dawn to dusk -- the venerable

role of the sun as the giver of life has been

known. Should it ever leave of an evening

and fail to return so too would we in a world

where a cooling planet no longer illuminated

fails to provide the balanced measures for

life to flourish. Winter offers a glimpse of how

vulnerable elements-exposed animals and 

vegetation temporarily cope not abandoned by

our fiery star but removed from closer proximity

as we involuntarily orbit its gravitational draw

resigned to the revolution that will restore us

to the benevolence that inspires our renewal

as worshipful revenants to an ancient ritual.

 

 

Forever A Child

 

 

Forever a child you gape and gasp

at the dazzling magic of endless starry

crystals dimpling the air as winter charges

into a landscape left desiccated and grey

by fall, transported to a time deeply etched

in memory when your childish eyes

transcribed the downy coverlet of the world

in your mind with enchantment, and fairy

tales were true as you recall the soft yielding

measures of snow packed into perfect spheres

and snowmen speaking of their delight in

release from the crowded pack and your

clever mittened hands. You remember the

pleasure of burrowing into drifts, of spreading

your arms and legs and there was born a

snow angel. The happy flight of a sled 

skimming a slope to deposit you head over

heels below, the warmth and comfort, the

laughter and the joy have never vanished

merely tucked safely deep in the bank you

know as memory to be retrieved annually in

a celebration of life and youth and nature.

 

 

Prevention The Cure

 

Beware, a nation that has seen the brink

of the chasm of annihilation is no longer one

to be trifled with. The responsive lightning strike 

of prevention in asserting the right of existence

should henceforth be perceived as the predictable

response to all and any promising annihilation to

complete genocide's goal. No longer a nation

dispersed and dependent hailed for its human

assets' accomplishments and despised for those

very traits of achievement in all indices of human

prosperity and quality of life. Know this, that

threats against a nation now capable of mounting

its defences against the pitiless designs by vicious

psychopathic regimes will be deflected and the

consequences will deliver to those emitting such

threats the very existential uncertainties they

openly plot to accomplish in destroying Israel.

 

 

Down Payment on Deterrence

 

And so it proved that those who survived

despite the most exacting measures to ensure

they would not proved the adage that whatever 

does not kill you will make you stronger. That 

proof came at a terrible cost. No fewer than six 

million lives exhausted in dense black smoke

their ashes enriching the soil that hosted the 

crematoria all over Europe just as the living 

souls had enriched the culture of the societies 

that hosted them unwillingly and no longer did. 

But the survivors would never again be herded 

onto cattle cars nor buried in mass graves for 

they have returned to their Biblical-era roots 

and the fortification of security and defense 

superior to the military assets of those determined 

to complete an unfinished genocide is dedicated 

to prevention. Any that may threaten their 

intention by now proceeding with a renewed

 annihilation and their architects will discover

they themselves become ashes of deterrence.