Ties That Bind

 

No consanguinity? No matter.

No tribal, ethnic, religious links?

No problem. Geography, culture?

None? Not to worry. There are values

and emotions intrinsic to human nature

admittedly not shared by all yet common

to us all in the great blueprint after

which flesh and blood were fashioned.

None among us hold death in great

personal esteem and when that Angel

strikes a blow to extinguish not one

nor two or even four lives but two score

and more the departed souls' absence

strikes the hearts of those of gentle

passion for the ties that bind us to life

are sacred. Those who exult at this

misfortune citing tribal enmity represent

the blueprint mutation replacing tender

care for others with spiteful character

corrosion, souls dark with putrid hate.

 

 

My Muse

Robins were conceitedly singing this morning

and I was certain I heard May knock at

April's door. In the garden the slightest

of breezes wafted the fragrance of warm

earth as my spade dug into the moist friable

soil. Tulips were blooming and grape

hyacinths and scilla too. The clematis vines

and climbing roses are filling out. The sun

spring rain and warming temperatures

have coaxed the winter-weary garden to

spread the news: time for all perennials to

surface and they are.  Yesterday's rain

has produced miracles of new growth and

today's vibrant sun that warms my back

has promised a spectacular summer of 

luxuriant plant growth. I am planting 

Dahlias in the moistly receptive garden

soil, Asiatic and toad lilies and gladiolas

envisioning my pleasure when they grow

and bloom. My little dogs nuzzle me as I

dig to just the right depth; they are puzzled

to see me doing what they often do. This is 

a perfect spring day, summer not far behind.

But wait: there was no sun today, it has been

heavily overcast, humidity hanging heavily

in the air; I merely embellished an otherwise

perfect day thanks to the imp that's my muse.

The Wakening Forest

The roof of the sky this day is dark

and brooding saturating the

atmosphere with a humid warmth

like a restrained dip in a 

southern ocean on an idyllic tropical

island. There where exotic

flora has its own customized

rainforest and brilliant greens

throb and vibrate with life in all

seasons. Here in a northern continent

spring forests are exhausted from

their struggle for survival

assailed by ferocious icy winds and

vicious snowstorms as they slowly

recover from a lifeless hiatus

amidst nature's blandishments of

sunlight, caressing breezes and soft 

rains nursing the forest and its soil-

submerged vegetation bit by bit

restored to life, awaiting summer.

Oh Ye of Little Faith

Is there any other enterprise on Earth viewed 

with equal measure of respect and disdain beyond 

Big Pharma whose bottom line is the goal its 

brilliant science vibrates to for happy shareholders 

drive the machine that produces life-saving drugs 

the world is so deeply attached to. Challenged to 

solve the riddle of a deadly pathogen biomedical

engineers tasked with the urgency of mounting

deaths created a miracle bringing deliverance

to a threatened world population, heralded

for their genius, blessed for their supreme

science, congratulated on their beating time

at its own game, they were enthroned as

saviours as the world responded with an

anxious uptake of a COVID-evading vaccine.

Perfidy, thy name is humanity, no longer

enamoured with the romance of deliverance

resentful of lagging production and shortfalls

state governments fume as their populations cast

blame upon their inept performance as they

cast about for a political lifeboat and soon

enters the prospect of lawsuits to punish the

arrogance of Big Pharma, this time for utterly

inexcusable drug component shortages, national

border restrictions and production complications.

Interesting Times

It takes a sagacious sense of wry humour

to emit a curse that sounds like a blessing

and to impute its origins as an ancient Chinese

imprecation yet it seems a fitting enough origin

though false reflecting the temper of these times

where humanity has been cursed by a chimeric

pathogen that broke the bounds nature invested

it with as a primordial evil essence burrowing

its way from animal to animal across the species 

barrier in China where the human animal is

wont to see table delicacies in other species

caging and slaughtering the wild, inviting the

lost free spirits of the animal kingdom to return

with a vengeance wreaking death and destruction.

 

The Courage of Rejecting Hatred

 

He is safe now, a professor of clinical psychology 

at a university in the West informed at an early age 

that as a Jew in Lebanon his safety was a tenuous 

affair, but free now to speak of the pathogenic 

disease of infectious hatred triumphing over critical

thought and reality, robbing minds of the capacity 

of logic, endowing them with the fuel of deeply

viral ethnic, tribal, sectarian antipathies streaming 

them toward a lifetime of psychoses befitting 

psychopaths, as he describes Middle East conflicts 

as 'the standard by which the butchery of all

other civil wars is gauged'. But there in those vile

intemperate given-to-violence communities 

courage also lives as when one steeped deep since 

childhood in hatred of Jews, taught to fear and

to scorn them, encouraged to commit deadly 

violence, now looks back and wonders why as he 

forges friendships among them. And another

writing publicly in Arabic questioning why it is 

Islam has its holy sites as does Christianity yet

is the City of David, al Quds disputed as the City 

of Jews, the site holding the most sacred symbol 

of Judaism's lost Temples. These critical thinkers

applying the wisdom of common sense  and careful

thought to overturn millennia of Koranic spite upon

a people unwilling to bow to any god but their

own, in so doing inviting a fatwah on their heads. 

Ignoramus, Reveal Yourself

Best to say nothing than to reveal that you 

know nothing. The compulsion to speak

to situations you have but a smattering of

knowledge of, to leave the impression you know 

more than you do will come back to haunt you 

when someone who does know more than you

quietly comments correcting your immature 

observations guided by an impression held dear 

that your words are wise, imaging a thoughtful

reflective mind capable of discerning when to 

reveal what it knows, when to maintain silence. 

Instead you chose the conceit of instant comment

led by vanity imperiously thrusting caution to the 

sidelines. The favourable impression you aimed 

to elicit shattered of your impulsive volition.