Making Headlines

 

Yes, yes of course we know that conflict
kills, for there have always been wars
and there is no secret that the victims
are invariably innocents, not necessarily
combatants, and certainly one 'side' is
noble, the other the quintessential dark
enemy of humankind for whom the very
essence of human rights is an unknown
and uninteresting concept. The military
machine targets the enemy bombing
known positions with such technical
accuracy that the deed done, it is then
revealed the number of civilians whose
lives were forfeit in the greater interests
of annihilating a threat the enemy poses.
That indeed is war, the collateral damage
that is inevitable, that represents the
damning face of war whose pursuit is
never-ending. Yet that collective shrug
of regret for such untenable losses also
betrays the collective sigh of acceptance
for, as we know, there are some wars
that must be fought in the struggle between
good and evil, and we are intrinsically
good in our determination to outlast evil. 
But oh, the furor, the indignation the moral 
offensiveness of an imperious dictator 
blatantly ordering the assassination of a 
dissenter; quite simply not countenanced
a deed so outrageously atrocious that the
global community of sanctimonious critics
as one declares the hitherto tolerated
source of the crime persona non grata
a punishment never before visited upon
such a powerful, wealthy, influential
source, signifying the outrage of a
public whose disinterest in the plight
of many triggers fury in the death of one.

 

 

Seasonal Blueprint

 

There is a respite in the forest this day
from the incessant winds that have
brought an early winter to the unready
landscape where foliage still cling to
their hospitable perches, now stilled
no longer weaving and waving masts
within the forest canopy a dazzling glory
of brilliant yellows, gold and orange in
a display of nature's artistic talents
despite the absence of probing fingers
of sunlight on an overcast day whose
darkened clouds fail to subdue autumn's 
signature expressed on the forest floor
in a deep abundance of fallen foliage
preparing to put the forest to sleep
during the cold months that deeply
penetrate the soil to depths overlaying
tree roots harbouring the living sap
blanketed with mellow yellows soon
to join the richness of the leaf mass
assembled through countless autumns
well familiar with the onset of winter
for already lazy spirals of snow are
descending in white flurries of frozen
rain exemplifying the resolute season
departures in nature's primal domain.

 

 

The Genius of Conquest

 

There must surely be a certain natural logic
to it all, but it does seem passing strange
that humans, all of whom share the wealth
of emotions that beset us throughout life
find it difficult to recognize that needs
are universal, as fundamental as the very
struggle to maintain life -- a valued albeit 
temporary inheritance each succeeding
generation faces anew in various degrees
of success or failure. Compartmentalizing
the human race into segments identified
by region and all the separations that flow
from location where cultures are born in
support of identifying the endowed group
and spurning the orphaned group into
categories of strangeness and competition
we isolate and we ostracize, threaten and
demonize the other as obstacles to guaranteed
endowment meant solely for the favoured
routinely denied the suspect. The hierarchy
of entitlement versus disinheritance surely
a human construct yet not a phenomenon
lacking guidance from that primeval era
inducting humankind into the social strata
harnessing the unequal powers of blood and
belonging in competition with the meekness
of humility yearning to achieve cohesion on
a different scale, that of empathy and gentle
persuasion through minds elevated in the
spheres of a social contract urging accord
in the process surrendering self agency to
an ideal that tyrants target for destruction.

 

 

Our Predatory World

 

Strange, nature's construct of the human
mind and the empathy that is evoked
when confronted with the realization
that the world can be a frightfully nasty
place to inhabit where humankind does
indeed advance its interests yet remains
primordially raw and red with blood in
furthering those interests and woe betide
those who represent the huddled masses
whose only aspiration is to survive for
it is they who are invariably sacrificed
on the alter of achievement that the few
pursue. We shudder with apprehension
and fear lest our personal world become
contaminated with the inborn pathology
of universal psychopathy but it is a trait
imbued by nature's decree that those few
whose success in wresting resources from
the many will prosper and rule and
inevitably oppress, subjugate and deprive
the masses of the means of life though
not the will to live, depriving them with
finality through the medium of conflict.
Yet when such tyrants are the objects of
annihilation themselves the tumult of
wonder, deploring the violence that ended
his rule negates the destruction he wrought.

 

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.