Constitutional

 

The only measure in which they are
opposites is their height, hers fully half
his. Otherwise they are each in their
elder years physical wisps an ambitious
wind might easily carry off into the wild
blue ether. They are so subdued in meek
character floating up there no sound
would be emitted from their protesting
lips, loathe to cause a fuss and draw
attention to their fanciful flight. Of late
the magnet of home tugs him close
while she maintains his abandoned
and familiar neighbourhood schedule
perambulating a circuit of streets her
pale insubstantial presence enormously
enhanced by the wind-and-cold protective
cocoon enveloping her. Her toddling
gait however betrays the inner presence
of a sensitive soul, the shyest of the shy
whose tentative smile matches the
tenor of her slight quavering voice, one
never quite comfortable with idle
albeit civil chat. Yet she is constrained
to halt her abortive steps to commune
with whoever happens to be there
with halting comments betraying her
insecurity determined to be unflinchingly
polite schooling herself to idle talk
as though to prove herself just like you
and another smile and a nod return
her to that shuffle back to him.

 

Prospecting

 

Uncompromisingly, respect for her must be
the basis for a sound intimate relationship 
she noted as her outstanding requirement for
any relations to succeed and when reminded 
that she often stated she had no respect for
the panoply of men whom she serially shared 
home and hearth with, she frostily asserted 
respect must be earned. Unsurprisingly there
are times when she moans that she desperately
needs to be cherished yet she treats love as a
disposable commodity. Logically it should
be men of high intelligence and good earning
potential she might be attracted to since she
is imbued with both qualities, yet she swiftly
responds to any man expressing desire
requiring no preliminaries nor the time to
evaluate his qualities before proffering her
own temporary commitment. Understandably
ill-suited by temperament to any suggestion
she could be dominated in turn -- her specialty
is domination resulting in those who acquiesce
ultimately being quickly shed, and those who
resist appealing to her sense of personal
challenge to be overcome; succeed or fail
the end result separation accompanied by
harsh condemnation and accusations of
intolerable abuse as she racks up a growing
inventory of grievances along with bitter
recriminations at the lack of worthy suitors.

 

 

Impudent Imposters

 

Although as a breed they are her ardent
admirers, gardeners in their absurd conceit
also consider themselves, though they are
mere emulators, nature's rivals. For nature
herself the challenge is non-existent to her
nonchalant expertise in nurturing life on
Earth. For gardeners the science of botany
and the excited pleasure of considering
themselves responsible through their
concentrated labour in coaxing a garden
to bloom leads them to the exhilarating
but innocently absurd conclusion that their
ministrations are wholly to account for the
luxuriant colour, texture, fragrance and
architecture of a garden so slight in its
indifferent scale not to be compared to the
wholesale grandeur of nature's accomplished
creations of geological splendour and
uncountable variety of life-forms some
of them self-contained and self-sustaining.
The micro-Edens so beloved of gardeners 
clinging to the illusion that their knowledge 
and efforts alone coaxed growing things 
to obey and preen their presence for the 
self-genuflecting delusion leading to the 
self-appointed role of garden steward
reflects the hubris of humans, yet another
creation of the great manipulator of matter
she alone designed and brought to existence. 

 

 

Paean To Progress

 

There, the deed is done legislatively
and recreational cannabis is now legal
in Canada, joining its sister-legality of
some duration in medical use of the drug.
A drug, yes, a psychotropic drug whose
measure of ruination throughout history
in all societies which it has graced has
been a nightmare of dysfunction and
death. But look at the optics here, the
very signature of the industry where
workers in these 'labs' producing vast
amounts of marijuana wear what else?
why white laboratory coats; see the
resemblance to the medical community
and if we trust hospitals and doctors with
the symbolic health of a nation, why not
perforce others wearing those badges of
trustworthiness, even if the motivation is
building a legitimate new industry whose
profits will be stupendous both for those
growing and purveying the stuff and for
governments permitting its social use
whose revenues will soar into the ether.
As for unintended consequences, well
reality is there are always misfortunes
and no one can be assured safety and
security measures will work in all and
sundry circumstances so youth's promise
can be cerebrally dulled, and infants can
be hospitalized with toxicity and the family
pet can be presented for resuscitation at
the nearby vet's, but a popular and much
vaunted perspective has been validated
freeing up peoples' self-consciousness to
another more relaxed dimension all thanks
to a man whose scruples and function
celebrate diversity and liberalizing progress 
Canada now distinguished, a stoned nation.

 

Garden Dirge

 

In spring the soil under my hands was
friable and warm from exposure to the
sun and gentle spring rains. The ritual of
soil preparation, the excitement felt with
the first burst of bright green spears
appearing overnight through that soil
and the expectation of more, ever more
revealing their underground presence in
an inexorable thrust as though perennials
were gleefully announcing, 'we're here!
remember us?' as though you could forget.
For weren't you the enabler, planting that
small beginning plant life when the garden
started its long career under your careful
ministration, uncertain at first, gaining
confidence as the garden itself did in its
steady maturation. Ah, spring and the
opportunity to set in motion yet another
summer-full of constant colour, texture
the kind of architecture that a gardener
fully appreciates as a work of art even
if, in the final analysis, it is the natural
order of vegetation to respond to wind,
sun and rain and would do so absent your
guiding hand. But this garden, this one
is your dream aspiring to reality, moving
from night to day in bloom and fragrant
presence. And then comes the time when
your hands are enmeshed in cold, wet
soil on the verge of frost when undertaking
the disassembly of that which nature
wrought with your sensitive aid has
initiated its retreat, and the floral
delights you planted have shrivelled
their lifecycle complete. Your garden toil
then is that of an undertaker sadly but
with resolve removing the dead and the
dying, soothing the soil as late fall
advances into winter and all is lost.

 

 

As The World Spins

HELL, Hieronymus Bosch

 

When pretty little Alice credulously 
followed that frenetic top-hatted rabbit 
consulting his gold-chained waistcoated 
watch she discovered her psychedelic 
Wonderland complete with growth and 
shrinkage, madcap poetry, lunatic Queens 
babbling Duchesses, clever frogs and
Dodos, in a thoroughly downside-up
world where sensibilities are thwarted
and the unexpected expected, where
a leering grin can separate itself gleefully
from its Cheshire cat host, and tea parties
are not quite what they seem. Her foray
into that dizzy Otherworld was but a 
glimpse backward from ceiling to floor
exit to entrance of the world we inhabit
ourselves, merely magnified in its
exuberant display of life exemplifying
character types we meet ourselves in
our everyday world that we think of
as odd and then pass by secure in the
comfort that between them and ourselves
there is a world of difference, they
inhabiting quaint personal lunacy and 
we assured of cerebral balance in logic.

 

Nature's Plenipotentiary

 

She has transformed herself into a black
projectile within the green embrace of
the forest, her lean, lithe body racing
madly along trails, slipping effortlessly
between trees, driving her long legs
wildly along the forest floor in a frenzy
of ebullience at the freedom before her 
to challenge the wind in its sweep through
the woods, her zeal for movement and her
love of life palpable, no longer restrained
for there are no fences, no rooms where
her spirit nudges against confining walls.
Here she is at full liberty to become as one
with her surroundings. As an alpha female
she indulges her fantasies in a complex
dance circling endlessly, looping herself
in a confusion of exquisite choreography
this large dog with her graceful antics
making the forest her very own stage.
This is another persona, not the one that
growls threateningly at smaller dogs so
they cringe and retreat in her presence
satisfying her lust for preeminence in that
dog-greet-dog world where preliminaries
highlight the advantaged by demeanor
and hers is that of the bully, whereas in
the forest interior she becomes the virtuoso
exemplar of canine athletic prowess none
can equal vested in her alpha-female stature.

 

Perspective 101

 

A dog is a dog is a dog, to paraphrase
the perspicacious Gertrude Stein. It remains
the instinctual reflex of very small dogs to 
proclaim themselves in control of any situation
failing to notice that they are indeed very 
small and cannot even control circumstances 
leading to their own security as instanced 
when confronted by a large, very large dog 
when the small one curdles in confused
terror, hunching into itself to become not
larger, but smaller, not to be noticed and
thus survive the encounter though there are
no guarantees. This the law of the jungle
as it were, one that prevails in all animal
kingdoms including that animal that prides 
itself on self-elevation to the heights of the 
kingdom's executive level challenged by 
no other. Yet humankind challenges itself 
incessantly, the little man convinced of the
inviolability of his person and his personal 
opinion criticizing those of greater physical 
dimension in the sense of having attained 
the power of political tyranny accustomed 
to dispatching critics to the netherworld. 
Unless one lives within the security of a 
law-and-order community of communities 
when all and sundry may yap to their hearts' 
content, no fear of repercussion armed with
the weapon of the ballot box at his disposal.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Expulsion? Just ... Because

 

 

It was because they were Jews and it may not

have been just but that's the way it was, no one

really cared. Give the world something to get

morally exercised over, on the other hand -- but

that's a different story. That's the story of a motley

assortment of settlers who migrated to the scene

of an ancient exile to live among the pious Jews

who had never left, settlers from Egypt, Syria

Lebanon, Jordan arriving to search out a livelihood

aroused to fury when a mandate for Palestine by

the League of Nations led to a Partition Plan by

the United Nations and a new exodus was born

and the world turned its attention to 'refugees' who

required empathy and financial support ad infinitum.

Itself leading to a renewed exile when surrounding

nations expelled the Jews that had lived among

them for millennia, an unobtrusive affair because

no one noticed. Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia

Yemen, Iran: where are your Jews? Arab visitors

to Israel can hear the daily call to prayers emitted 

from mosques throughout the country, a nation

Jew-haters label 'apartheid', its presence called an

'occupation' for the military presence forced by

Palestinian Arab violence perpetrated against Jews

insisting that Jews must abandon their heritage.

And the world approves. Why? Just ... Because.