Interludes

This not the benign nature that so
assiduously tends my garden, sweetly
offering gentle rains and abundant sun,
kindly soil conditions and minuscule
creatures within to nurture and bring to
brilliant maturity the trees and shrubs so
fruitful that delight our green experience.

That nature that sends us colourful
songbirds to nest in our garden trees
and hosts of insects, butterflies and
small, furry creatures to swell the
natural presence of all her subjects,
impressing us with her goodness of
purpose and integrity to her design.

This is another presence entirely, one
we cannot help but be aware of, yet as
remote and rare, not to be thought overmuch
of, a fearful, powerful and utterly destructive
presence, threatening to rescind her gracious
demeanor in favour of her domineering persona
devoid of purpose but to terrify her creatures
with the bleak certainty of her dread presence.

We hear the symptoms of her dreadful wrath,
the thunderous groan of the Earth as it convulses,
contracts and shudders under her impervious,
imperious direction. We feel the constancy of our
naive belief in our place challenged, as what was
solid and unmoving, writhes in an agony of violent
creep, collapsing and separating and shredding.

We see the darkly menacing vortex of the
hot breath she blows into a funnel cloud
voraciously sucking everything in its path
into chaotic re-distribution, reversing order;
what was assembled as a whole reduced to
its pathetic constituent parts, strewn brokenly
on a suddenly-sere landscape of despair.

These fearsome events leave us trembling
and trepidatious. Our clever technologies
laid bare to malfunction and disarray. Torrential
rains wash away landmarks and drown the
puny signatures of humankind's presence
leaving doleful regret and the misery of loss
in their wake. Nature effortlessly removes
and destroys what she has given. We begin
to understand our temporary ownership.

As placid nature, her violent outbursts spent,
reverses the geological and atmospheric
surroundings to reflect the soothing familiar,
hope, then the conceit of vanity, then scorn
and entitled empowerment settle back into
place as we assume again the settled ownership
and determined control of our earthly domain.