In Memoriam

Truly, it's a dangerous world out there
and always has been, from primal times
to the very present mandating caution be
practised in defense of threats seen and
unseen but realized the moment they
strike. It is why nature saw fit to imbue
her creatures with the instinct to survive
and in the jungle that comprises our
environment one must be aware and
prepared to react accordingly. Those
instances when wild animals seeking their
own survival would hunt down humans
have been superceded by civilization in
all its inventive guises persuading us to
surrender bow and arrow. Even so it is
well to remember that humans prey on
other humans and to place distance
between ourselves and the psychopaths
that prowl dark avenues of opportunity.
Here's where technology enters when
scheming offshore calling centers do their
utmost to persuade the gullible to send
cash so the fortune left by an unknown
relative can be received, or one's computer
'fixed'. Even one's trust in computers is
mislaid since the Internet can lead the
trusting to corrupting disaster. And here's
where technology and our own stupidity
and lust for attention leads us to become
our own worst enemy with the derring-do
of selfies on the cusp of cliffs looming
over endless space when to emulate a
spirit of adventure, lethal danger offing
focus dominating nature leads, so sad
to the instant termination of life itself.

Cultural Tyranny

How perfectly civil Democracies tend
to be, beyond virtuous in their regard
for sensitivities distinguishing all people
as qualifying for equal rights and pursuing
that agenda relentlessly, persuaded they
have the key that will unlock the perfect
world to benefit all of humankind. How
perfectly sociopathic tribal societies tend
to be with their tyrannies of entitlement
their dictators and casual disregard of all
human rights, viewing askance as enemies
all those collective nations willing to 
accept them and their bigotry and violence
as intrinsically equal however misguided.
The dictatorships of the majorities and of
the minorities enforcing their personal
rules of imperial judgements enslaving
and belittling, persecuting and imprisoning
warning, torturing and besieging their
own along with neighbours' in conflict
shed their troublesome populations like
lice cleansed from their body politic in
the assurance their refugee plight will 
move the compassionate spirit of those
populations and their governments who
rule by just laws in a wholesale transfer
of people escaping with their lives and
little else yet bringing with them the very
culture and historical enmities that have
enabled their tormentors to power as
they become restive in the new environs
allowing them liberty to do as they will
and they will in time rebel, demanding
their due to restrain equality extended to
those they deem unequal to the privilege.

Peace In Unity

A wisely ambitious man was that thoughtful
merchant urbanized in a desert geography
where tribal Bedouin exercised that most
basic of human endeavours committing
to never-ending conflict over scarce resources
the difference between prospering and 
indigence so wars of conquest prevailed 
between tribes and clans and believers in the 
gods of pagan faith until this man, raiding 
the sacred texts of two dominating regional 
religions mounted his own conquest of the 
wildly violent tribes using the persuasion of 
the bloody scimitar to gain adherents in
their turn committing to endless conquest
taking the Middle East through a storm of
slaughter, moving on to Europe, Africa and 
Asia to mount upon the weak in battle a 
belief in surrender to an inexorable divine
whose solution to rejection was execution.
Peace be upon those who surrendered
freedom and autonomy, to all others a
death warrant. Succession in a budding
dynasty brought disagreement eluding a
concordant satisfying all factions and 
from that sundering came a sectarian
storm that has never abated as one sect
slandered and slaughtered the other in an
endless cycle of religious fervour dedicated
to a faith whose purpose purported peace. 

Your Birthday

A day like any other in a long succession
of days that make up a year for a year
is as long as it takes for your birthday to
come around, and the day began as it always
does with a hug and a snuggle, smiles and
routine where I set the table for breakfast
and you take our little dogs out to the
backyard on a day like most winter days
where the garden is white with hoar frost
and there's an ice fog smothering the
atmosphere. It's your birthday, my love.
We shower together, have breakfast, recall
the speckled trout you caught on our
honeymoon that the lodge cooked for our
dinner that night. We talk about our early
years, our families, our children, our sole
grandchild because just because and it's
your birthday and somehow it seems so
important that we review all these chapters
in our long life together because my dear
it's your birthday. Friends ask what we've
planned for the day and we smile. The day
plans itself for it's your birthday and though
it's a day like any other our quietly hushed
celebration of memory and love suffice.

As The World Turns

How the good souls living in comfort
in the developed world sighed in relief
at the end of colonialism, damning their
nations and all those whose entitlements
as advanced nations gave them the
confidence that it was right and just to
invade the developing world in conquest
dredging them of natural resources and in
the process setting an example of exemplary
governance, and when they finally left 
those struggling nations could at last
govern themselves, free, free at last. Now
they sit, those once-colonialized countries
in the triumph of accusation and pride
in the strength of their own governing
aptitudes, the very exemplars of corruption
of predation on their own, discriminating
and depriving their populations of any
opportunities, exposing them instead to
persecution, conflict, poverty, unemployment
while those oppressors sit in the hallowed halls
of the United Nations elevated by acclaim to
steering committees on human rights, on
 female empowerment and demand reparations
then parlay their victimhood-turned-power
into influence peddling while condemning
nations for whom human rights is sacred.
The formers' borders gush their nationals
anxious to escape the inertia of poverty and
hopelessness hoping to enter the confines
of the latter, which heave collective sighs
and begin the migrant intake relieving the
oppressors of responsibility unrecognized.

Snow, Falling

Even the winter wind and the cold
seem to somehow recognize the entry
of another of winter's elements in the
throes of a winter day's snowstorm
when the world turns a wondrous
shimmering white and there are no
impediments to a landscape of beauty
so intense it takes my breath away. And
each time I wander through the woods
in the midst of snow falling so softly
it caresses everything it touches with
its tender presence, it is as though I 
have never before beheld such
transcendent loveliness as everything
surrounding me is entwined in the
gossamer skeins of snowfall gently
transforming the world into a pristine
sparkling scene of lofty dimensions
lifting all that survey the event into a
transport of dreamy observation all the
while hugging oneself with the joy of it.

Taking Stock

When you are older you will see when
you are my age you will understand
when you are no longer so young all will
be revealed and the mysteries that so
confound you now will be mysterious no
longer. Familiar words to live by, better
yet to recall, shrug off and forget. Which
is doubtless just what I did when my mother
would repeat that mantra so irritatingly to
a daughter who posed too many questions
to which there were no answers. Now I
have answers to which there are no queries
and who to share them with? We yearn
when young to become adult and thus
acquire independence and that state will
bring us our own authority under whose
agency we are responsible to none but
ourselves. Envy for what we see as the
privileged lives others lead draws us toward
social facade lacking authenticity for we
view cursorily a screen beyond which no
eyes can penetrate without invitation and
none is given. Our youthful curiosity and
aspirations to become other than what we
are drive us toward a fragile goal hardly
worth the effort of agonizing over. In the
turmoil of our early minds we see an elusive
future enjoyed by others so why not ourselves?
Until the realization of maturity whispers to
us be content with what you are and have
achieved for it sits well on your psyche. 
Consider yourself privileged for you are.