Boxing Day Gift

Her photo is on the back page of the local

paper. She is a young, attractive woman

a mother of four, the caption adds. Beside her 

another woman, her best friend. On the front page 

a headline: Killing domestic in nature: Police. 

And the quote that it is only a "homicide incident 

domestic in nature". Nothing to see here, a life 

snuffed out. But the public need not be overly 

concerned is the message; no general threat looms. 

No word of the arrested, the live-in boyfriend 

who might or might not have fathered any of those 

children. Testimonial from tearful friend how 

cheerful and good-natured, a perfect mother she 

was. A crowd-funding campaign will go forward.

Nothing to see here, a life snuffed out. An event

so common anywhere in the world, the reader

sighs, turns the page, pours another cup of coffee.

 

Sisters

 

 

Life began for them as sisters growing up

in the Pale of Settlement where Jews were 

sent to live lest they contaminate other 

Russians with their direct presence.

Sisters but unalike in every conceivable way. 

One married a Ukrainian peasant the other 

married my father. They were together as 

man and wife for over thirty years raising

four children together. Cancer took him at age 53. 

It wasn't cancer that took my mother though 

she had entertained colon cancer twice. 

Eventually thirty years past my father's death 

my mother was placed in a communal setting 

for elderly patients with dementia. My aunt

an inmate, greeted her sister on arrival but my 

mother failed to recognize her. She did though

mention the long-dead man she always referred 

to by his family name planned to drop by

sometime later that evening, and smiled.

 

Creation, Time and Space

 

An imposing cathedral of

 

unparalleled beauty sheathed in

 

crystalline grandeur lifts its

 

imperious grace to the ceiling

 

of the sky, velvet with approaching

 

night, a halo of moon and the

 
boldness of stars impassively

 
observing a landscape unlike

 
their own of frozen gases and

 
ancient minerals. The one below

 
with its living atmosphere

 
responds to the distance of its

 
sponsor-sun in a frigid pause

 
of the clamour of growing

 
things unlike the inert nothingness

 
of cold and distant space. This

 
most familiar place of time and

 
seasons, liveliness and curiosity

 
a highly specialized experiment

 
by nature in randomized creative

 
adventure. And so, her creations

 
look up and peer beyond the

 
darkness of the unknown, certain

 
of discovery and revelation.

 

 

 

Like Goldilocks

 

The calendar year never errs. It

registers me at 85. And it's true I now

bear a cap of silvery hair, my face is

creased where it never was before

and though I'm still quick not quite

as I was. Sometimes when I look in

the mirror I'm surprised by my mother's

presence. Mostly, though I feel young

and why shouldn't I? Like Goldilocks

not too old, not too young. Except that

is when I'm out in public and society

informs me by the subtlest of whispers

that I've graduated to elderly status and

then Goldilocks exits leaving me with

the impression I've suddenly become old.

 

Repulsing Extermination

 

Disdain, oppress and persecute anyone

long enough, threaten, demean, humiliate

and they've been psychically wounded. Carry 

on and add to that litany of contempt casual 

violence enabled by diminishing the human 

stature of those forever at target and then no

type of assault, no corrective violence to alter

their place in the world seems to suffice. Leaving 

the ultimate expedient of ridding oneself of an

intolerable nuisance whose presence galls and

we enter the theatre of atrocities once expressed 

in the frequency of deadly pogroms which

themselves were obviously inadequate to rid 

the world of the pestilence of Jews. Enter the

Final Solution to ultimately forge a perpetual

motion machine; delegitimize, sanction, isolate 

dispossess and violate paving the way inevitably for  

vast populations of those whose heritage found root

in what the pious call the Holy Land to be 

obliterated. That was then. Now the remainders

of the despised have resurrected their ancient 

homeland and now they respond blow for blow. 

Yet there is the reality of timid hesitation, full

self confidence absent for the outlier nation

remains held in low regard yet yearns for 

approval, so in response to deadly provocations

looks to the international community, unwilling 

to earn further censure and so refrains from

striking the final blow to an enemy once

again wholly dedicated to its extermination.

 

Bleak Black Celebrity

 

A crime so repulsively heinous it

boggles the mind that when he recorded

himself eviscerating the man he had

just killed and noting for posterity before

he posted it that the parts were a carnivore's

delight the atrocity provided entertainment

and evoked envy among those for whom

such atrocities were treats to be savoured.

An international search through Interpol

brought him back to the scene of the

crime where he was charged, tried and

convicted, a man whose posturing and

egocentric hubris transfixed a reluctant

audience with disbelief that anyone could

become such a monster. The mute grief

of the victim's parents as they sat day

after day through the trial before returning

to their own country to mourn their son

there, seared the memories of the public

compassionate in their own sorrow that

society could raise such a deviant wretch.

Mother of the sadistic murderer though

begs to differ; they don't know her son but

she does, a lovely human being with not

an ounce of venom in his heart for anyone

for he played with kittens not as charged

tormented then killed them. But it is the

kindheartedness of the national prison

system that places everything in its proper

perspective when it arranged for his

marriage with conjugal rights to another

prisoner as they couple for a lifetime of

what others call happily wedded bliss.

 

Doctor ....

 

He sees you every six months and

you seem to think your advanced age

gives you liberty each time to tell him

how weary he looks, how strained and

you admonish him as though he is the

patient and you the doctor. He regards

you thoughtfully, shrugs and admits he

needs a rest but cannot see where he

would find one. Too busy, too many

calls on his expertise, too much you

know, responsibility. And you part of

course amicably, in hand yet another of

his prescriptions for a test, one of many

he has prescribed for you a woman an

elderly woman with an irregular heart

condition. His wan and worn image

stays with you and when the telephone

rings and his office informs you that

your cardiologist will be 'away' for

three months leaving others to care for 

 his patients while he recovers from

surgery you are not surprised that his

cardiologist has sent him to a cardiac

surgeon to undergo open heart surgery.