EverythingSomehow

Scientists used nine years of data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to create this detailed, all-sky image of the cosmic microwave background. The image reveals 13.8-billion-year-old temperature fluctuations (shown as different colors) – seeds that grew into the galaxies we see today.

NASA/WMAP Science Team

 

A single immensely singular

infinite density of matter and 

antimatter and no one to know

of its non-existence. It just was

the event of creation, the universe

appearing from no thing its

patient arrival as an indescribable

quantum event of huge mystery

and sublime presence. A mere

fourteen billion years ago, an

event unprecedented and explicit

as a representation of awe

as in awful and as in exemplifying

impossible; just simply became.

From nothing but a hidden

presence unassuming and

precipitate came the ineffable

cosmos, its still lingering

microwave shifting in time and

space validating the existence of 

all. How? Do not trouble yourself.

 

 

The Nourished Mind

 

What is a dwelling place
not graced with the presence
of books but a temporary
resting place for someone's
corporeal essence, soon
enough to be snuffed in
the fullness of the human
expiration date. Indifference
to opening one's mind to the
mysteries that surround us
here and then gone, adds
little to the human passage
in limited time. The home
invested in knowing the
world and its surroundings,
honing a familiarity with
humankind's awareness
of the immensity of the 
universe and our own minds
within it savours immortality
and celebrates the very triumph
of our transitory existence.

 

 

Generational

 

When we were young, a
lifetime ago, our parents
hauled us off to shoe stores
looking for sturdy footwear
impervious to the heavy duty
stress young limbs in motion
inflicted upon them. In service
to the solemn occasions
experienced older salesmen,
family men themselves, knew
the routine well that we so
loathed as much as the product
bringing forward nastily
rugged stock at the stated
upper-price limit. When our
own children were young that
drill had seen slight options.
The parents whose wallets
were strained had children
whose earning fortunes far
outstripped their own. Their
offspring, however, had academic
opportunities never dreamed of
by their parents. Now, in their
grandchildren's time there are
no shoe shops, only the grand
shopping emporiums of 
"super stores" and "big box stores"
large and complex enough to
threaten directional confusion,
and the hordes of those servicing
clients in the "sport"-obsessed
community are the hip young
zealously serving the needs of
shoppers, themselves academic-
adverse, no employment available
but salary-lean and obligingly
and regretfully service-oriented.

 

 

Ode To Youth

 

 

When he was bright and
new to life he was
perfection in form and
essence personified. Nature
herself must have spent
painstaking hours in research
and development to breed
a living, trotting, emotive
toy. Wherever he went
adoring crowds followed
eager to view him, touch
him, hold him And he
grand master in his
Lilliputian world, reciprocated
allowing himself on display
to be held and endlessly
admired. As we all grow
old, so has he, and adoration
no longer enthuses him
for he can no longer hear
the squeals of joy his 
presence elicits, and wishes
to be held only by us, our
elderly little companion.
Still sweet to behold, but
exceedingly cantankerous
bald, sight-impaired with age.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.