The Yearning Widow

 

Little do they yet know

she has long since freed her spirit

from the confines of her body

in her grieving yearning to join him

who preceded her and left a

yawning chasm of desolation

her mind could not overcome.

They who love her and for whom

her bleak future, blank stare and

refusal to live in his abysmal absence

resolve to resuscitate in her a will

to live through the poignant memory

of what was, little comprehend the

depth of the irresolvable vacuum 

and futility of their focus on life for one

who has lived and now will not. 

 

 

Male/Female She Created

 

The 'mother' of all that exists, Nature is less

a perfectionist than she is an inspired and

sometimes reckless experimenter dedicated

to trial and error with a truly impish sense of

humour. Having designed the ultimate creation

with a brain struggling to compete with her own

ineffable genius, she also gifted that creature

with the pleasures of procreation and conferred

upon it a binary reality infusing one half with

the attributes of motherhood the other left with

the endowment of an instinct for the hunt and

so they evolved man-the-source-of-sperm and

woman welcoming the outcome in her gifted

womb. In all her creatures was this gift of

creation proffered; those in the air, in the seas

in the trees and on land with the occasional

misfiring of neurons and confusion of genetics

to a place where males imagine themselves

females and females certain they are males

disrupting the order of Nature's deliberations

though in point of fact it is she herself whose

attention occasionally and infamously lapses

into distractions that confuse the formula.

 

 

How Strange It Is!

 

As a feature of indecent human nature to

jealously guard what is not theirs in the

arcane belief that claims are nine-tenths

of a just law of ownership it is beyond

strange that the most creatively talented

group on Earth from ancient times to

the present remains hounded, threatened

detested, their heritage and ancestry

mocked and belittled yet the articles

of their faith, their history, their land

and their contributions to the world

that shuns them are valued decoupled

from their source in counterclaims of

authenticity. From brilliance of thought

and reasoning, execution of monumental

discoveries to the ultimate horrors of

deliberate annihilation the world rushes

to claim originality and victimhood as

their very own experiences, denying both

achievement and martyrdom to the tribe

whose very existence profited them all.

 

 

Pastorale

 

The setting sun
like an Amondisc
Throwing waning light
in searching fingers
on oblique mountains
fencing the lake
where purple martens
swoop lazily
and robins
offer a paeon
to another day.

The honeyed air
casts an amber glow
over your flesh
mystically
as of some ancient rite
etching the features
of your face
defining the
slow undulations
of your body.

I cup this image
in memory
now and then peruse it
turn it like a
fabled treasure
to catch the light
of another day.

 

 

Faces, B.C.E.

 

Immutable stone
steatite, limestone
sandstone, granite.
Anthropomorphic
... zoomorphic
inert materials.
Human hands
... worked you
into aesthetic
definable shapes
aeons ago.

.... Your
bland fierce asexual
visages confront me
the inheritor of
art pre-historical
... my steps ringing
through stone corridors
of stone buildings
erected to house
... stone artifacts.

Meant to outlast
your creators
... you yet live
in a mythic
... skin-itching way.
I look at you
and you look
right back at me.

 

 

The River

 

The St.Lawrence winds
energetic coils
through the landscape
of this spring day
like a great serpent
roused from winter's
sere abeyance and
seagulls coast the wind
screeching for handouts
from people picnicking
on the lush banks
sheltered from the rain
by long swoops of willow.

Rain stipples the river
bounces off its taut skin
and waves lap the shore
twisting bleached logs
against the rocks
piled there and
multifariously shaped
tinctured like some
titan's cast-off playthings.

A robin serenades
in glad anticipation
driven to frenzied compliment
and still the gulls
wheel and swoop
teasing us for handouts.

Far on an island bank
a great blue heron
daintily steps among the reeds
its head outthrust and
primordial; at once risibly clumsy
yet imbued with timeless grace.

Fish lunge, leaping for mayflies
those myriad airborne sprites
celebrating spring. In the
distance great lakers skim
the river like great
sea behemoths. The
river teems with purpose
responding to needs
uncoils its sinuous length
hosts, transports and feeds.

 

 

Night

 

Dark pulses warm and moist
on the springtime air
this night. There hangs
a voluptuous moon
luminous and heavy
as woman with child
casting a diluted coruscation
limning leaves
rustling in the slight breeze.
Birds shift in the trees
somnolently ease feathers
beak comforting birdtalk
to one another
their sounds near lost
in the concert of crickets
the creak of the frogs
beating the night
so it shifts and breathes
croaks and trills
like some giant
unknowable beast
like some well-greased
programmed device
a perpetual motion job
turning out generation
after generation of
night revellers
nocturnal emissions
fleeting the darkness
spiralling tree tops
the hunted, the hunters
silent in pursuit or flight
the crickets and frogs
in a rising crescendo
of purpose
drowning the silence
of the chase.