This has been most auspicious
this scintillatingly bright day
beyond bone-chilling
given plunging temperatures
high humidity and incessant wind.
Our boots crunch deeply
into the ice-caked snow
as we pass trees in seasonal
white festoon, wind still busy
urging cakes of snow to !plop!
The sky blue, with drifting
white banners decorating the occasion
a silvery scimitar of a moon
lost in the greater grandeur
of that amazing cosmos.
It is not yet mid of the afternoon
sun sending long shadows
as our legs assume slender
proportions as of gliding tentacles.
As bright as the day has been
there is a darkening quality
hovering in the atmosphere
the sun all too prepared to set.
There is a supreme tranquility
on this shortest day of the year
ushering in calendar winter
though the winter season has long
preceded the calendar.
One an event of nature's making
the other a notion of humankind.
Yesterday wind bellowed through the
forest, whipping snow from branches while
birds fled and animals shivered in their burrows.
Today -- ah today, the wind has transformed
itself from threat to avuncular host whispering
welcome to those who tread the forest pathways
portraying itself as meek and companionable
speaking the language of comity and friendship.
Yet something lingers in the woodland interior
of yesterday's hostility when the surly wind
sent penetratingly icy fingers of painful cold
to remind all that huddled in trepidation and
fear that its power is unlimited and occasional
episodes of theatrical bonhomie do not define
its entire repertoire. Even while the mild and
orderly gusts ruffle the feathery snow dusting
remaining on boughs and branches there is an
aura of disquiet. Dusk has arrived too soon in
heralding night's imminence when under cover
of a black night the wind can plot new excesses
to terrorize its tender victims hoping to survive
winter's misery. For the meantime a collective
sigh is released from the forest as the heavens
liberate their treasury of translucent crystals
their inner sparkle brilliantly lighting the sky.
The soft, mouse-grey sky
canopies the landscape
lavishly curvaceous with
buoyant snow from yesterday's
blizzard that brought a
mesmerizing disquietude
to Nature's humble creatures.
An icy chill has asserted
over the land, settling into winter.
The orb of the sun gleams softly,
intermittently casting tender
beams of light to highlight
here and there the track
of a hare, the wingspread
of some night-time hunter.
Malevolently-driven winds
harnessing the weather to
an ultimate degree of dislocated
anarchy prevails. Hurling itself
at all that presume to present
in its imperious path. Now
settled into a moderately
persistent presence.
Groaning, moaning, clacking
forested tree tops. Toppling
snow drifts sitting on tree stumps
like ice cream on their cones,
the bundled snow falling softly
creating a landscape of its very own.
The creek streams silently onward
its banks softened in silver sides.
Fall malingerers are placed
on notice; stay, and surrender
to an unaccustomed harshness
of climate in degrees and ferocity
you've not been equipped to surmount.
If survival is your goal - take flight!
Wind spurts fierce thrusts compelling
the snow to drift languidly and
mound into voluptuous landscapes
while evergreen boughs heavy
with snow release great clumps
themselves springing to height.
Lazy clouds of snow drizzle
the landscape. Falling clumps freckling
the grey sky, shifting clouds to
pleasure the insistent sun. Shafts
of light haze through the forest,
firing the snow to silver crystals.
Through the soft and gentle
stillness, the staccato of a hairy
red-capped woodpecker. Snow
generously comforts a recently-bereaved
copse of elm, maple and poplar,
naked no longer. Trunks grey
black and brown stippled
gloriously-blinding white.
Desiccated, bright orange bittersweet
fruit cluster along their vines'
chokehold on prickly Hawthorns.
Their haws shy against the
flamboyance of the others.
The creek drifts clear and tinkling
over gathered fall detritus
now heavily banked in snow.
A raven crosses the undecided sky
its raucous call shredding the silence
swift body a black arrow true to its mark.
Soon, snow-muted silence regains
its imperious reign.
Not very enlightened
nor expressively creative,
but most certainly qualified
as a short-short story.
About life in general
and an evaporated passion
in particular degree
well beyond rescue.
They met, they tarried.
Sharing the veneer of
common interests
but not, alas values
and cultural background.
He as disinterested in hers
as she in his. Still, they married
and celebrated a scant few
years of mutual neglect
and growing revulsion.
Though neither would
offer the other release from
tension and aggravated
bitterness in expectations
drowned in grievance.
Theirs was a story
abbreviated by his final
solution. Her ultimate demand
answered by his final decision.
He did not attend her funeral.
Inflicting upon him
recrimination and blame
that only a faithless woman
is capable of wounding a man by;
her final act to seal his future.
Each is dear beyond compare
but just for the sake of the challenge
let us briefly and with love and
affection enumerate the contrasts.
In their precociously early years
grandchildren strike us as
miniature versions of ourselves
and they instinctively realize
that our purpose in their lives
is to entertain them. Puppies
in their gamboling formative years
entertain us. They are attentive
to us, fulfilling our needs in
exchange for love and theirs
has no limits and few constraints
content with our company as we
mature together. Grandchildren
know us as 'old', likely equalling
mental incapacity, incapable of
understanding their language
as they spurn the formality of
ours, along with our stone-age
musical preferences. They are
horrified to view us dodderers
dancing; our pups are intrigued by
such admirable shenanigans. No
longer in approaching the age of
consent do our grandchildren look
to us for entertainment, but to
endlessly fund their entertainment
their advanced education, their
adult lives. Exasperated? Amused.
Our social history is one of
imperial colonialism lording it
over less socially, economically
advanced cultures, even cultures
of ancient heritage that the hubris
of ours found wanting, and now
those times are less hallowed, the
spirit of domination and oppression
that zeitgeist acknowledged
with the penance of shame as
we humbly teach ourselves
the virtues of tolerance and
respectful understanding, to make
amends so we may like ourselves
spurning our past. Now we are
tolerant of those who in history
felt somewhat as we did
sublimely entitled to crude
and bloody conquest in a
surging scimitar-led campaign
to forcibly enlist those not of the
faith to surrender ignominiously
and penitently to Islam. Now, we
fatuously empathize with their
campaigns of murderous raging
jihad murmuring sympathetically
past one atrocity after another
that we have, after all, offended
their theistic sensibilities.
