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.

 

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.

 

The Setting Sun

In the swiftly gathering dusk
the hollows of the forest 
glow with the warm tones
of fallen foliage, crisp and
dessicated awaiting the
snowfall of winter. In those
hollows run rivulets of recent
snowmelt, the atmosphere 
vacillating, uncertain whether 
to accede to fall or winter. 
The arras is of fall yet the 
chill ill wind is that of winter, 
numbing the blood of the 
woodland creatures. An evening 
fire emerges in the sky, slumped
from daylight blue to the
darkling shades of imminent
night; the setting sun
fire-lighting the heavens.

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.

 

Urban Wildlife

They visit us often, those
creatures unbidden but welcome
unaware that humans are
jealously attached to the homes
and properties we call our own,
private possessions whose 
purpose and ownership is
deemed such that none may
encroach upon. Exceptions
granted to creatures free of
our quaint view of the world.
While in our arrogance of
domination we impudently
make free of the domain of
the wild organisms of the Earth.

Forest Nightfall

As dusk too early begins
to shutter the light of the day
the last trill of a thrush
presumes on the hush
that lulls the early winter 
forest to rest. Wind has
vacated the snow-dappled
landscape as a veiled mist,
faintly opaque, rises to meet
evening's rush to send 
darkness, a coverlet to lend
the mystery of lengthening
shadows' anonymity, finally
engulfing all in the clutch
of the dense dark of nightfall.

Winter Wraith

There is little nuance of colour 
tone as though the landscape is
jealous of its monotones of
greys and browns, black
contrasting with white tenuously
on the cusp of melting, scant
contrast in tufts of evergreen
boughs relieving the backdrop
of sameness this early winter
day. Stillness pervades the
chill atmosphere as ice pellets
fall from a leaden sky, and a
small white dog, delicate legs
akimbo in motion, dangling
ears flapping, whips through
the forest undergrowth, like an
amorphous gathering of snow
suddenly rising, pantomiming
life; an ephemeral winter wraith.