The Trees In Our Garden

In our garden the serendipitous
symmetry of form and function
display their exquisite qualities
of seasonal inevitability; a burst
of divine beauty as trees and shrubs
proffer a too-brief vision of
splendidly arrayed ornamentation.

The laden, luscious magenta of
giant magnolia blossoms sending
their fragrance to compete with the
bridal-white of the crabapple petals,
the bright orange of the Japanese
quince in flower, and the minuscule
yellow florets brightening the tidy
green abundance of the weeping pea.

Hovering bees fly purposefully
from flower to irresistible flower
dipping their feet in the munificence
of yellow pollen, their own bright garb
resembling lanterns of transient light.
Hummingbirds, ever alerted to floral
nectar, wings thrumming, iridescent
bodies gleaming, flit among the
flowers; an ephemeral presence.

Springboard For Change

Hamza al-Khatib, a 13-year-old Syrian boy who disappeared following an anti-government protest in late April, appeared to have been brutally tortured before his death. Pictures have added fat to the fire in the ongoing Syrian revolt.

The Arab Spring that brought the world
sharply to incredulous attention appears,
somehow, to have metamorphosed into a
springboard heralding the Arab Winter
of their discontent unanswered, leaving
the social revolutionaries who passionately
gathered in their demanding numbers to
protest failure of fundamental human rights.

The varied response has been polarized and
polarizing, from surface assurances of
long-awaited lifting of civil restraints - and
opposing sectarian violence and endemic
corruption - to outright military responses,
resulting in mass funerals and sorrowing
but hardily resilient, determined protesters.

The hard lesson being learned: That in
some parts of the world where heritage
and tradition preclude enlightenment,
popular demands for change to benefit
society become criminal acts of civil
and religious disobedience, the penalty
for which becomes violent death.

In hindsight, the detested dictator
seems downright benevolent when
compared to successors steeped in a
cauldron of fanatical resolve to implement
a reign of theocratic oppression and terror
- too late, however, to easily reverse the tide.

Gardeners' Conceit

Rain, rain go away
the restless gardener
wants to play. No
longer the muted palette
of winter months,
the garden beckons
in hues of fuchsia
and gold, violet and mint,
umber and emerald,
scarlet and cream.

Complacent itself
under the gentle pulse
of accelerated advance
thanks to the steady rain,
the garden, blase and
independent of our
ministrations, revels
in its allegiance with
the elements, placidly
denying the conceit
of devoted gardeners.

The Sodden Forest

The damp-dedicated humidity and
bruised-cloud breadth of sky represent
the stubborn remnants of days
and nights of unrelenting rain.
The forest has responded with
whatever resistance it can manage
once absorption levels are reached;
its vast floor resembling a swamp,
tree roots drowning and bright
new leafage hastened. The graceful
fronds of Solomon's seal and the
plenitude of ferns revel in their
shaded, water-logged preference.

Crows croak from their bare
spire perches atop storm-shattered
trees. Moss lavishly furs the downed
trunks of generations of expired
trees in a climax forest. Hawks circle
the rain-sodden air, shrieking their
territorial imperative. A green
tumble of bedding grasses, cow vetch,
violets and lilies under blooming
Hawthorns crowd the ad hoc wetland.

The compost-mass of years' layers of pine
needles gleam rusted orange in the
sodden landscape. Dogwood are setting
their spring floral bouquets, hazelnuts
their fruit, honeysuckle their delicate,
fragrant blooms. Pests of the woodlands
pursue their life goal of species survival,
seeking the blood of hosts in the endless
cycle of nature's complacent renewal.

Nature's Nature

This has been yet another of
Nature's dark, moody days:
clearly she is in a fit of pique.
Was it something we did?
Hard to feel contrite when
we're uncertain just how to
slog along and accept
what we can not possibly
on our own initiative, alter
hoping her gloom will
soon dissipate so we can
once again acclaim her
generous nature and forget,
as we're prone to doing, what
an incendiary nature she has.

A Dripping Presence

The overcast gloom that brought us
overnight raging winds and torrents of rain
have subsided, the sky turned from charcoal
to gentle grey, the wind and the rain both abated,
one to a cool breeze, the other a dripping
presence. A light veil of mist curtains
the woods, rising in streamers from the
darkly funneled creek, rising and swelling
to the areas above the cavity of the ravine.

The forest floor is dark and sodden
dank. Yet the newly leafed trees are
brilliant with the fresh coating of emerald
laid on with nature's late spring brush,
glowing in the dimly overcast light. A
humped, ebony-dark crow lifts from
the broken mast of a shattered pine,
breaking the stillness of the day.

Woodland flora seem not to care for
the absence of the sun's glowing warmth,
bathing in the spray of the rain falling
on the delicate white froth of the uplifted
foamflowers, the white, starry bloom
of bunchberry, nestled complacently
in their comfortable green nest.

The coy curl of the green-purple-striped
petal of the secretively splendid
Jack-in-the-Pulpit offering a sacrament
to another extraordinary day, for even
gloom in nature has an ethereal, transitory
beauty that elevates all who behold it.

Garden Aerial Artistry

The bee, large and confident,
views the garden as his personal
diner, perusing the offerings,
clarifying his selection judiciously.
He is large enough to jostle the
branches in his determined ransacking
of the pendulous caragena's bright
yellow flowers, of their pollen.

He seems indifferent - certainly
cannot be oblivious to the equally
energetic activities of a foraging
hummingbird, imbued with the same
entitlement and enterprise, flitting
delicately with spiralling grace,
from blossom to blossom.

Their garden-centric choreograph
a sublime theatrical performance
of practised elegance. Costumed by
Nature's critical aesthetic, these
aerial performers with their courtseys
and arabesques enliven the garden in
shades of gold and scintillating green.

Raw Nature

It begs the imagination to comprehend
quite how powerful the old girl is. For
the most part, we live trustingly with her
benign manifestations that so capably
and generously give us life and the ability
to negotiate her climate, alter her terrain
and advantage ourselves by using
and manipulating her creations.

We are her ultimate creations and her
beneficiaries, imbued by her with our own
creative tendencies audaciously altering
what she has created, if we can, albeit
without the authenticity of primacy,
for that is hers alone. Our ardent and
presumptuous arrogance may offend on
occasion, resulting in a display of displeasure.

The forceful vigour of the atmosphere
succumbing to precisely those conditions
revealing the combined rage of monsoons,
heated air colliding with a colder layer; the
groundwork of violent, unstoppable winds,
twisting through the air, scooping up all
before them in an awful paroxysm of
pulsating, destructive violence.

After the roaring approach, the searingly
atrocious shattering of all man-made edifices,
nature's own growing things torn from their
stable roots deep within the shuddering soil,
the storm of wild winds pass to reveal the
clutter of destroyed details only seconds
before whole and resolutely comforting,
impervious to time and decay, but not to
the ravages of the ravening winds.

Another season of wild, rapacious tornadoes.
Another reason to recall that Nature's power
and the grandeur of her sweep through our
lives is one of imperial command. Ours to
take note that where Nature's elements
reign, to be respected, proximity avoided.
The alternatives are starkly and morbidly
suicidal by Nature's impartial decree.

Spring Forest

The exquisitely delicate pink buds
of the wild apple trees are now an
abundance of perfect white blossoms
clustering their branches and
perfuming the atmosphere. Among
them their more modest counterparts,
Hawthorn flaunt their blossoms on the
way to becoming haws. The towering
pin cherry dangle their white clusters.

Dappling the forest floor minuscule
white blooms of wild strawberry. The
fluffed white heads of baneberry
interspersed with white trilliums and
the white foamy plumes of foamflower.
All present a visual antidote to the
sere bleakness of early spring.

Bumble bees, the quarterbacks of
their hives, linger among the pollen
plenitude. A distant rumble of thunder
parts the dark clouds. High above, riding
the wind, the piercing shrill whistle of
a hawk, caring nothing for the flora,
intent upon the forewarned fauna.

Urban Bounty

In the urban forests serviceberry
are in bloom; they will produce berries
serviceable for consumption in luscious
pies and pastries. In the wild fastness
of the forest, morsels of morels, and
delicate truffles emerge for our
delectation. Wild ginger, garlic, apples,
strawberries, thimbleberries, blueberries
and blackberries make their seasonal
appearance, inviting the initiated to
partake of nature's generous bounty.
Hazelnuts and walnuts, there for
collection, nutmeats complementing
the fresh flesh of fruit meats.

We pampered and oblivious city
dwellers knowing nothing of such
offerings; that which cannot be purchased
is unheard of; we seek the cultivated edibles.
Hybrids, cultivars, nursery-grown botanical
specimens of fruits and vegetables beckon
and appeal to our sense of the correct
order of agricultural production.
Without human and mechanized
intervention that which nature produces
unassisted becomes irrelevant,
beyond notice or commodity value.

Such is the vast distance that has
been erected between humans and the
natural world; commerce and convenience
at sharp profitable odds with the recognition
of waste and neglect of the resources to be
accessed by the intrepid curious,
mindful that nature produced us, not
that humankind produced nature
and her modified foodstuffs.

Death Watch

He is querulous, impatient,
unhappily aggrieved. This life
he is trapped within is not his.
He longs to escape its miserable
unfamiliarity. No solutions offer
themselves to his feverishly
resentful mind. The presence
of his children irritates his
delicate sensibilities, enormously.

Yet he finds himself insisting
he will not be left to wither, alone.
He detests that his grandchildren
see him helpless, too frail to
communicate, his limbs swollen,
drugs wreaking havoc upon his
well-worn body that gave him
good service for 94 years before
succumbing to the ravages of life
finally stumbling at Death's hearth.

He knows life, has lived it well.
He does not know death. It is a
stealthy, indomitable aggressor; he
wants no part of it. He was a passionate
gardener, loved the soil in his capable
hands, its warm texture, fragrance,
fertility. He was adapted by talented
inclination to growing things.

He has outgrown that urge, he
has himself outgrown life. No longer
tending his garden, others tend
him with the avid attention he
once showered on tender shoots and
buds, now neglected. He is steadily
growing, inexorably, toward
the final harvest of life.

Splitting The Assets

Like a toadstool, appearing out of
the sodden soil on a bleak, wet day,
there was the sign, surprising the neighbours
with its unsubtle provocation: House for Sale.
Who knew? No one had the merest idea
in this neighbourhood of family-friendly people.
Though they'd been there before, seen similar
dramas take centre stage, no one ever
imagined dissolution of these two.

It became abundantly clear that this
was not merely a house for sale; it was
the only home the three bewildered,
fearful children had ever known. The
warmth of their emotional comfort had
turned abruptly chill. They are torn
between love for their mother
and the same for their father.

The two who had reached toward
maturity within the intimate confines
of their marriage contract. This was the
house where their children were conceived
and lovingly nurtured. This is their familiar
terrain, where the route to their school
sees them daily ambling. It is where their
friends live, with their own, intact families.

Now the house has been mysteriously
transformed into an unfamiliar place
echoing with memories, plangent with
parent-child confidences, but one where
strangers enter to evaluate its potential
for someone else's family. They will leave
their playroom, their backyard and pool;
they will leave behind them the
sweetness of childhood.

The children are too young to
comprehend the vulgarity of abandoning
a relationship meant to outlast childhood's
frank and fundamental needs. They have
no ability to understand the concept of
splitting the family assets en route to
splitting a family. They do not know
that they three are also assets waiting
to be split as vows are broken
and the break can no longer be fixed.

The Garden Speaks

Look ... Here I am!
Did you really believe I
would forget to return?
You felt dispirited by winter's
long, cold stay; I did not.
I have an ancient collective
memory; survival becomes us.

Yes, I'm back, here to stay
awhile, yet again. Look - here
and there, and over there ...
Recognize them? they're the
early harbingers of the garden.
Allium, fritillary, anemone, bergenia,
and pendulous, pink bleeding heart.

And there are the columbine, the
creeping phlox. The roses are
awakening, the clematis and the
honeysuckle. There's heuchera and
foam flower, lilies-of-the-valley
perfuming the garden, and day lilies,
peonies, hostas everywhere! Trust me,
they're all in their element.

The flowering crabs are alight
with blossoms, the lilacs nicely budding,
the rhododendrons and azaleas
preparing to burst into flower.
And you cannot miss the fuchsia
magnolias, their blowsy blossoms
bursting with pride and a tinge of
floral aristocratic upsmanship.

A Matchless Bouquet

A delightfully orderly confusion
of riotous colour and shapes shift
like a kaleidoscopic view to entice,
entrance and entrap the gardener's
eye. Each group of freshly piquant
floral types beckoning, beseeching
to be chosen to enhance the
garden in a growing season
longed for through frigid winter months;
the gardener agonizes over selection
and variance, determined this
year's garden will out-perform
last summer's luxuriant excess.

So many choices, from old standards
to new hybrids tantalizing with
their unique presentation, sunny
personalities, perfection of form
and shade. Petunias, marigolds,
daisies, lobelia, asters, begonias,
zinnias and dahlias. The gardener
succumbs to the entreaties with
the full knowledge they are
inner-sourced to fulfill a seasonal,
deep-seated desire to emulate in
aesthetic style what nature casually
tosses together in a matchless bouquet.

Terror

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Updated+photos+Slave+Lake+burns/4791459/story.html#ixzz1Mf7PNHDR

The haunting, terrified yelps
and screeches of fearfully
bewildered wildlife as the
flames of the unstoppably
voracious inferno draw
closer, sped by the shifting wind;
the heat of the wildfire
expediting the wind, the
increased velocity crazing
the flames to leap impossible
distances, sparking ever
new outbreaks, imperilling
then incinerating all that
stand immobile with fear
or rooted to the ground.
They do not live to witness
another day, beyond char.

Kiss Of The Sun

A bright, flighty flock
of goldfinches, settled
within the embrace of an
old forest hemlock sweeten
the air with their chorus
of notes embroidering
the atmosphere.

Below, on the forest floor,
where grasses grow in a
tangle, bloom buttercups
and cinquefoil, bright and alert
to the kiss of the warming sun.

Oblivious of their visual
counterparts high above
under the same life-enhancing
orb in league with nature's
existential protocol.

Who?

The rain-flushed creek churns its
passage downstream depositing the
detritus of the day before on its
drenched clay banks, rank with the
forest's spring shedding of winter's
harsh abuse. Aroused bees assiduously
seek early blossoming forage within
obliging yellow-faced trout lilies.

The white-frizzed floral heads of
baneberry, exquisite bells of
lilies-of-the-valley, purple woodland
violets and blossoming serviceberries
all offering transformative substance
in the life cycle of plants and insects.

Overhead, dark clouds, shunted
rudely by prevailing winds offer
glimpses of a lighter hazy layer
revealing an impatient sun denied
full illuminating exposure.

From the depths of the ravine well
below the forest canopy the solemn,
softly urgent query repeated, though
answers there are none. A great grey owl
betraying its raptor's presence to the
warm-blooded prey below. Surely
awaiting no revealing response?

Deep in the ravine
under gathering rain clouds
the primeval head of a
Pileated woodpecker
thrums on the hollow
trunk of an old
towering hemlock, sending
rhythmic, deeply bass
echoes throughout the
silent woods. Sounding
like the deep-chested
fanfare of Kodo drummers
heralding thunder claps
soon to emerge
from the darkening sky.

The Still, Warm Arras

Splendid, the dawning day;
Akhenaton’s glorious disk
glowing golden through
the gauzy white haze of
vapour lightly screening the
top of the world. The
sun kissed soil of spring
has released straw lilies
and Solomon’s seal among
the woodland flora so eager
to flaunt their colours.

High above the greening
canopy of the woods a
hawk twists and turns an
aerial ballet, whistling its
boast to the audience
below. A breeze wills new
green shoots to a
companionable wave as a
sole Mourning Cloak
flutters from tree branch to
emerging bracken, disconsolate
that its one true love
has not yet presented.

On the banks of the slowly
gliding stream, water striders
test the current. There,
hugging the soil, emerging clusters
of foamflower, frilly and pale.
A distant counterpoint of
scolding squirrels and
racketing woodpeckers sounds
across the still, warm arras.

Slip Stream

The brilliance of the early
morning sun throbs
and illuminates the wide
blue of the sky - flashing
then muting the winged labours
of a large, wide arrow of
Canada geese forging north.

Theirs the eternal journey
predicated on nature's
exquisitely timed and calibrated
transitions, sending her creatures
on their forward journeys to
capture the seasons' essences
and beckonings; eternal endings
leading to fresh beginnings.

The Colours of Spring

This has been a moody, brooding
spring, but nothing deters
the sweet trill of the crimson cardinal
seated high in the woods thrilling
to the wide, clear sky, the
warming sun in complete
command of the landscape below.

Finally, hesitant hawthorn and
wild apple trees blush green and
the Serviceberry trees, still leafless
in full floral-white bloom. Red Osier
dogwood canes leafing, yellow
birch dangling their catkins.

A pair of blues flirt together,
twirling and whirling around the
wakening forest understory. Among
the delicate white strawberry flowers,
they lift in a rhapsody of the season.
Alert to the brilliance of the sun,
yellow trout lilies nod.

Beneath the firs, spruce, pine
and cedars, among the poplar, oak,
beech and maples, lilies-of-the-valley
have roused themselves. Pastel
shades of ivory, gold, mauve and
purple woodland violets shyly
punctuate emerging ferns
and boldly flaming trilliums.

Spring in the forest; another season
arrived in nature's endless cycle.

My Heart's Ease

Every fibre of my being
strains to know you
are there, beside me.
I am at peace and
assured only when
I can sense the essence
of your presence.

That subliminal need
exists within me that
craves and demands your
presence for my
heart's ease.

We are as though
a binary unit, two
heavenly bodies revolving.
Hard to conclude who
is the primary; you
the sun around which I
revolve or me attracting
you with the magnetism
of my being.

Life's assurances
present in abundance
when you are there.
Sharing the mundane
and the rare, the beauty
and the pain, your smiling
eyes an ocean of sublime
love and care.

The Aerial Acrobat

The great lid of the world
is marbled with delicate ivory
dull grey streaks of charcoal
gently bruised with hints of
purple, casting a cool haze
over the landscape below.

A pair of ducks lift from a
wetland, flapping furiously
against the still air while a
vulture, expertly coasting on
elusive updrafts lays claim
to the sky as its very own.

Luxuriating in its
extravagant loops, twists
and aerobic acrobatics,
a dark dihedral against
the mottled screen of the
overwhelmed sky.

The Dynamism of Hawks

Wind finally abated, all is still,
the woods complacent with its
new season, hawthorns not yet in life
but sumacs spouting, and Serviceberry
modest in pale white bloom.
Wildflowers have commenced their
shades of mauve, yellow, red and white.
Primitive horsetails, red baneberry
dapple the woods before the
leafed canopy fully emerges.

Last week's wild windstorm
that ravaged tall old, yet frail
firs suddenly a dim memory
recalled by the felled giants littering
the forest floor in a rebuke to the
spring rejoicing. The return of
gentleness under a sky alternating
blue with its gold warming disk;
frilled with white clouds shot
through with steaks of rain-grey.

Above the green-glazed canopy -
wild shrieks thread through dark
branches arresting the notice of
small, furred animals and size-vulnerable
birds. The dynamism of hawks swooping
the skies and the landscape below, alert
to possibilities as only raptors can be.

The Unleafed Forest

A fiercely black crow, haunting
the airspace, silently following
our daily amble through these
spring woods. Along the way,
squirrels, waiting patiently
for the deposit of endless
peanuts. Years of expectation
encourages some to directly
advance their distance.

Advanced, albeit slowly in this
cold, wet and windy spring, are
the flora finally greeting our eyes.
Bedding grasses, trout lilies now at
last nodding yellow flower-heads
much more delicately aesthetic
than the sun-loving, deprived
coltsfoot sitting forlornly beside
the bank of the ravine's creek.

We hazard guesses where
the white trilliums will bloom
their rare presence among the
common carmine species in the
clay-and-sand soil of the ravine.
Here and there the muted mauve
of tiny woodland violets.

Lush mosses have resumed
their glowing presence on old tree
trunks along with lichen and orange
ruffled shelf fungi, awakened to
new possibilities. Woodpeckers'
triumphant discoveries of palatable
new hunting-and-pecking pierce
through the yet-unleafed forest.

Forces Of Destruction

The exceptional nations of the world;
advanced technologies, knowledge-based
economies imbued with social conscience,
forge a self-protective alliance of
military strength propped by socially
progressive values. To them, human
rights entitlements and responsibilities
express their motivating stimulus.

Tasked with the mission to intercede
on a war front designated under the UN's
"responsibility to protect" moral doctrine
they advance air-propelled strength to
diminish the forces of destruction
launched by a tyranny to subdue and vanquish
their own during a peoples' uprising.

As the dictator's iron might rains down
deadly missiles and rockets on the civilian
army of peaceful protests, encircling and
isolating, sealing escape routes, shelling
homes and civil infrastructures, hospitals
and schools, the world watches and waits.

Awaiting an outcome much like reading
the closing gripping pages of a popular
action novel; like viewing the final stages
of an oft-resurrected play on humanity's
inability to censor itself, restrain its
most basest instincts; choosing any
dimension of action as long as it fails to
reflect that of a peaceful, talented muse.

Spring Rain

A delicate patter
of spring rain
amuses itself
tip-toeing lightly
through my garden
spurring green shoots
and buds, spring bulbs
and unfurling ferns
to poke themselves
bashfully into
renewed presence.
A pale green blush
has captured the
garden trees
suddenly spurting life.

Attack : Counterattack

Newspapers announcing the death of accused 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden are seen at a newsstand outside the World Trade Center site May 2, 2011 in New York City. Getty Images

That which is inevitable is fated
to occur, beyond the efforts of one
man to avert the certain destiny
he has himself with great deliberation
created the impetus for; the slowly
grinding wheel of his misfortune
will eventually and fatally occur.

There is no reason to doubt
the veracity of what the ancients
warned: "Live by the sword, die by the
sword." Those who do evil often enough
escape the toll if the result of what
they do is malevolently
discreet in its affect.

Those who visualize and promote
grandly theatrical displays of their
brutal contempt to ensure that
unspeakable terror grips the minds
of victims bring the unmitigated
effect of venomous vengeance down
upon their unwary heads.

For those fiercely cleaving to the
concept of blessed martyrdom achieved
through celebrated and hideous acts
of bloody destruction, it must hardly
concern them that the end is at hand
for they have achieved their purpose.

Yet in a conflict that pits the defenders
of one religion against another, one
who considers himself an atavar of
Saladin claiming his role to lead jihad
against the Crusaders and Jews places
martyrdom in abeyance and thereafter
in forfeiture when dispatched by infidels.

No Glory Here

Wars are dread scourges
that humankind never fails
over time and space to visit
and re-visit upon itself,
stupidly failing to heed
its own advice to look to
history, parse and gain.

Yes, there is such a rarity as a
"just" war; remotely rare, where
the violated lives demand
intervention and here, too,
humanity fails to intercede for
just reasons, citing instead a myriad
of provocations originating
in crass imperatives.