Requiem For A Dying Penny

Truly, the times they are a-changing.
That which we take for granted, never
give a second thought to, find a
nuisance in its plenitude, and a
necessity when oddly scarce, suddenly
on the brink of extinction. Surely a rash
decision. Penny for your thoughts?

A decree from on high and another
species threatened. What could be more
common yet disregarded and discarded
than the lowest common denominator?
Our most humble of currencies, in
point of fact; ingloriously spurned,
shunted aside, shunned, shamed.

The copper penny, indispensable
in trade, exchange, the retail market and
children's allowance; a penny for a sweet
treat, abandoned. Our pocket books will
weightily jingle with other monetary
hardware; it, however, not worth a cent.
Gone, wistfully enshrined in memory.

Quietly Weeping

Her complexion the finest
deep-brown velvet, silky lashes
over large brown eyes, sensuous
lips and hair in comely, costly
cornrows, she balanced cellphone,
totebag, drink and self as she
stood in the lengthening line of
the elderly, the obese, the cranky
wheelchair bound, all eyes
focused on her dewy youth.

Everyone awaiting their turn to
present green hospital card and
white-red Health card for entry into
the universal records system. No one
wants to be there, begrudging the
merest acknowledgement of those
waiting before them; but be there
they must, to sustain health and
future. Suddenly a sharp crash
on the tiled industrial floor.

Her cellphone shattered as it
struck; no one but she moves to
retrieve the parts and employ long
and graceful fingers in reassembly.
A miracle; survival of the cellphone.
A collective sigh: if only those awaiting
attention could be put together again
just as readily, painlessly, without
recourse to invasive, and so horribly
fear-inducing surgical intervention.

Her turn at the desk, surrendering
her cards, the waiting line before her
depleted, those behind steadily growing.
She murmurs affirmative responses
to routine queries. Clad in skin-tight
jeans, figure-hugging jacket, she is a
slight figure, delicate, as she bends
toward the reception desk, lowers
head on her arms and quietly weeps.

Guilty, Your Honour

The intriguingly prolonged and
much acclaimed impersonation
of summer has vanished, illegally
abducted through the malign
manipulations of jealous winter,
returning chill, ill winds to this
early spring, despite the best
attempts by civil society to detain
the sunny disposition at unusual
manifestations of confused nature.

Suddenly, as unexpectedly as it
arrived, unheralded but celebrated,
the gentle warmth and balming sun
departed, leaving anxious bemusement
that soon turned to angry annoyance
at the unusual antics of the seasonal
equinox. Accused of stark betrayal of
weather traditions nature merely
shrugged in serene indifference.

The Accidental Recluse

The envious admiration of
those whose eager enterprise,
endurance, intelligence
and wit could not match hers
was never the motivating
factor in her unerring drive
to realize success. Comparing
herself to no one else, her
competition was simply herself.

She ruled the airwaves with
her speaking style, her breadth
of knowledge and her inimitably
admirable probing questions, drawing
out her celebrated guests, to inform
her broad-based listening public.
Her salary grew commensurately
with her ratings and reputation.

Her public persona edged out of
contention even her private self
until what remained was a veritable
faint whiff, that nonetheless, her
faithful and only companion
cleaved to, with affecting love.
That 'significant other' a trusting
canine friend waiting patiently her
arrival home from studio time.

The private person of such faint
heft who lingered hesitantly in the
shadow of the busily engaged public
figure of instant social recognition;
a lonely spirit rambling about in her
quiet, well-appointed home; no
intimates, no family, no alternate
interests; acclaimed and alone.

The Underwater World

Photography courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld

Cornucopia

What sensuous colour, shapes
and divine fragrances capture
the senses as one wanders row
upon row of treasures, tempting
and promising sensations of
taste in the richness of their
plenitude, nature's gift to us.

The nourishing abundance and
immense diversity ours to reap
the life-giving benefit. Nor has
nature been reluctant to
divulge to us her immortal
formula, for ultimate success:
chiefly soil, sun and rainfall.

She, their mistress, we as fortune
has it, the huge beneficiaries
of bounty and abundance,
become stewards of the land.
If we break faith with her trust
it is we who will suffer bleak want.

Merely His Due

That plump little stump-tailed
imp of a squirrel favoured us
today. Stumpy, out for his
quotidian woodland scramble,
to see what he could see
found no peanuts awaiting
his expectations, so he ambled
over to meet and greet us.

He knows our voices, is
familiar with our toy dog's
aptitude for a swift run
challenging his near presence,
but familiarity breeds comfort
and he doesn't mind, switching
his back-end sans tail most
provocatively, the scamp.

Given the choicest of the lot,
off he goes with his treasure,
ignoring the puzzled presence
of other, tail-endowed types
without his boldness of pop-up
presence. Which he repeats
at various turns of the trail,
demanding his entitlements.

Take No Prisoners

That very special emotional bond
that exists between mothers
and their daughters, an intimacy
like none other, a priceless jewel.
They are as one, indivisible,
each a clone of the other.

Mother lovingly, carefully
ministering to her beloved
charge, socializing, mentoring,
thoughtfully manipulating her
daughter ever more to resemble
what she is herself, imbuing her
values, her concerns: her daughter.

A conspiracy of love never to
become tarnished. Until rebellion
asserts its ugly presence when daughter
unaccountably prefers to become
authentically herself. The schism
agonizingly fraught with self
questioning, answered with
indignant self-validation.

By some odd psychic alchemy
forgotten in an amnesiac stupor
of wild disbelief, mother's own
rebellious years, but so helpfully
reminded by her own mother,
denial: the remote possibility of
comparisons; they do not compute.

Frigidity of emotional stability
the outcome, a chilly state of
uneasy truce, readily trumped
by any new and clearly inevitable
controversy where even the banal
becomes fraught with insupportable
freight. The mother-daughter
indissoluble bond of mutuality.

Murder, They Crowed

They are jubilant, those
dark-garbed winged Ninjas
of the forest steeples,
buoyant over their stealth
prowess, anticipating gains
furtively snatched from under
the very territory their rivals
claim as their entitled own.

Crowing triumphantly, they
spread sharp black wings
in a fury of flight, raucously
taunting, calling, gathering
in that famous formation, the
very convocation of conspiracy
minded mobs of sinister intent.

Clever, with their dark, intent
beady eyes missing nothing
of note that passes in the
forest. If there is advantage
to be had, they reason, why
not for them, as they gainfully
appropriate peanut caches.

Their ear-shuddering victory
shout-outs and piercing caws
collectively orchestrated to a
veritable din follows our trail
through the spring woods, as
they fly in spurts from tree to
tree, await deposit and seize the
moment, extracting treasure.

Beware

Have a care and be aware,
bitterness extracts its weight
in corrosive hatred in those
who choose to clasp its vitriolic
comfort, but it has a habit of
claiming permanent residence,
eroding trust and hope and the
capacity to forgive, forget and
forge on with life. Care and
affection flee in terror of the
visage of the embittered virago
who lapses into the acid depths
of blame, dipping each word
escaping her desiccated lips
in its excoriating share of
damnation. The shell, devoid
of kindness, empathy and trust
has forgotten how to care and
to share, resorting finally to
bitterly bemoaning the unjust
state of her abandonment;
alone, bereft of friends,
fearful and miserable.

A Mediterranean Stew

There, now we've done it,
driven Nature to distraction.
She obviously has lost track of
her elements' orderly succession
commanding their obedience in
conflicting and confounding
overlaps, her serene authority
suffering mightily in an utterly
unforeseen crisis of confidence.

Confronted by the obvious
interference of her timeless
clockwork architecture of the
Universe and our modest little
Globe, her irritation with the level
of our unspeakable arrogance
bespeaks uncertainty as weather
patterns stutter across one
another's paths in confusion.

This morning, an errant song
sparrow sang sweetly through the
fog that enveloped a morning
unlike what Nature decrees in
winter. The prevailing winds
have brought southern heat rather
than northern tempests. Bugs and
beetles, caterpillars and birds
have arrived, emerged, anew.

In the winter-weary forests,
snow and ice yet prevail with an
mean Arctic frigidity below and a
tropical breeze lofted above. The
sun's early spring radiance cooks
the gentle air to a Mediterranean
stew of dripping ice, azure sky,
ecstatic birdsong and copper sun.

Light-Lances and Sharp Fury

The antagonistic clash of nature's
Titans again, to enliven the evening
hours in yet another heavenly
provocation, fearfully entertaining
the mortals below, anxious to be
excused from the family quarrel.

Ill-mannered and -natured offspring
leaping to challenge each other when
their creator is elsewhere absorbed.
A crash in the twilight hours as an
immensely powerful dagger of light
slashes the cold, dark ceiling above.

Shattering the peace as sparkling
white shards of dangerously glaciated
top-of-the-world sprinkles the wary
atmosphere. Angry those elements;
blinding light-lances and sharp fury.

Peace-shattering, air-shuddering
rejoinders, the clatter of hail as
night fully descends, drawing the
final curtain on the drama. Though
backstage, the hostilities remain joined.

Rude Disturbance

One might logically imagine there
to exist a vast world apart between,
say, a factory floor and a hair
salon. Once, in an earlier Century
within the confines of yarn-spinning
factories the omnipresent din was
said to have been so persistently
mind-invasive that female workers
were driven stark, raving mad.

In a modern beauty salon, with
its high-tech decor, brilliant lighting,
white curtain music, technological,
electrical devices and female voices
in loud chat mode, the ensuing
clatter is acutely all-enveloping,
mind-distracting and, for those
unaccustomed to the ambiance, a
manifestation of rude disturbance.

Oblivious, the svelte young women
smiling ingratiatingly, offering
coffee, suavely enquiring of their
anxious clients which of the prevailing
styles they prefer these days, clacking
across the porcelain floor from
hairstyling station to cashier's desk,
noisome distraction sublimated.

Proceeding with services implacably,
none prepared to resort to the escapism
of mental collapse in a somewhat lunatic
societal convention. As once industry and
emerging technology paired with the
brutality of manufactory modes, the
present completes the cycle with vanity
urging toward another element of
sensory-destructive submission to utility,
borrowing from need to social whim.

Render The Seasons

There is an expectant, concerned air of
desperation in late fall, the southward
migration of songbirds for instance,
the search by small furry creatures for
haven to wait out the frigid, storm-driven
winter months. And the frenetic activities
too of homeowners to prepare gardens
for their long sleep and homes to retain
heat. Comes a whimsy, the last barbecue
of the season, in celebration, before
that too is stored for the interval.

Anticipation dashed with the discovery
grey streaks frantic to escape the incursion
of a threat to the nestled pink young within.
A gentle closing of the top, a swift agreement
that the following spring is time enough.
With spring's arrival, the barbecue carefully
unwrapped, the nest plumped with yet-green
shrivelled leaves and silky threads testament
to months of security, remnants of seed and
nut casings neatly stacked, mice departed.

Spring's Song-and-Dance

The moon hangs splendidly, full
and luminous, a priceless
jewel resting on the dusky
bosom of the sky, welcoming
the arrival of longer days, a
cotillion of stars dancing aloft.
In the western quadrant of
the Spring Equinox, Venus and
Jupiter entertain their admirers.

Beneath the soft blue canopy
the world awaits deliverance still
from winter, grudgingly unwilling
to decamp. The signs are there,
amidst ice and snow, gale and
sleet, as arrow-straight, long lines
of returning geese crease the
sky unceasingly night and day.

The first tentative peek dawn
makes of the coming day
awakens scarlet-plumed cardinals
to trill their joyful welcome,
pulling back the shades of dark.
At day's close, when the blind of
darkness hovers then descends,
robins pipe their clarion retreat.

Ode To Jonas

If there exists a finer writer
than this well-seasoned
news analyst so endlessly
skilled in verbally puncturing
social and political errancies
at the command of those the
public rests their trust within,
he/she humbly hides their
talent well. Jonas flaunts
his casually to brilliant effect.

His intellect knows as few
equals as his experience. His
sardonic wit raises sarcasm
and irony to heights never seen
since the publishing farewell of
that wildly amusing Oscar Wilde.
They had much in common,
besides dry, sly wit and exquisitely
arcane modes of expression.

Both found the British peerage
incidentally, fertile ground for
personal development. One of these
masters of language and prose
charmingly intimate in a boudoir
liaison with the offspring of a
Marquis. The other quite bosomy
in the intimate acquaintance with
the glamourous wife of a Lord.

"Lighting a candle is better than
cursing the darkness, they say. Trying
at home may be a good idea; it's
usually quite safe. Doing it in a
gunpowder depot not so much. It
may be more uplifting than initially
anticipated.
"On June 4, 2009, standing behind
the powder keg of a lectern at the
University of Cairo, President Obama
lit a candle. He declared his
"unyielding belief" that Egyptians
yearn for things their government
denies them. This was probably true,
and included Islamist militancy.
Explosions (a.k.a. the Arab Spring)
followed about a year and a half
later. They show no sign of abating
anytime soon." G.Jonas, March 10, 2012,
National Post

Ascending Peaks

Those extraordinary souls never
saw a mountain range that
failed to stir their blood, an
unnamed peak that, like the
mythical sirens of the deep
called out to mariners drew them
irresistibly, heedlessly, to make
their virgin ascents. Those 19th
Century alpine adventurers,
warriors to the unknown fearsome
heights of the world's fabulous
ceiling came to the Swiss Alps,
the Canadian Rockies, the Himalaya
of Nepal, to ranges in Spain, in
Ireland, the Hindu Kush in Pakistan
and beyond, to challenge nature's
geology and her ferociously
unforgiving climatic atmospheres.

Chronicling exposure to ice fogs,
gale-force winds, days of
unceasing snowfall burying their
paltry tents and themselves
until they ventured thigh-deep
and determined, malnourished
but driven, to ascend a razor-sharp
icy peak, watching in helpless
horror as a companion hurtled
into the chasm below. Somehow
surviving falls into unseen chasms
below, somehow rescuing
themselves from a dashed, frozen
death to recount their tales and
infuse others with their passion,
returning time and yet again
to new opportunities and
inspiring conquests until their
fate-allotted time had passed.

Oblivious To All

As swiftly as it empties, the waiting
responding to their names called, the
open room with its sturdy chairs arrayed
side by side, fills again with those awaiting
appointments. Light from the gloomy,
dark-clouded exterior streams through
windows, a wall-mounted television
catches the eye spewing the comfort
of the ordinary. Electrocardiogram done,
some return to wait. Others wheeled in
their chairs by orderlies, companions
anxiously waiting. People sit blank-faced,
some scanning magazines, reading novels,
studiously avoid meeting others' eyes
lest they be captured by another's misery.
Steady, confident strides of health
professionals provide a staccato backdrop
from the corridor. Pudgy men, slow of
movement and reaction view the moving
screen aloft then shuffle along when called
to their appointments. Elderly wisps of
white-haired women spryly leap to attention,
hailed to their EKGs, while others sit morosely
squat, draping excess flesh over chair seats,
slowly unwrapping candy bars, muffins.

In High Dudgeon

There she goes again. In her usual
spirit of impish mischief Spring has
delighted in spreading the rumour
that Winter has packed his baggage
of wind and ice and snowy blasts
preparing to depart the scene in the
high dudgeon of a seasoned thespian
affronted by his captive audience's
lack of acclaim for his extraordinary
efforts to stage ever greater dramas.

The more strenuous Winter's efforts
become, the louder the irritating
groans emitted from the audience
until Winter avows he will no longer
serve up those extreme delights of
relentless gales and icy fogs,
bracing cold and immensely awesome
blizzards of unending snowfalls. Off
he stamps in a tantrum of gross
proportions astride the North Wind.

Conniving Spring offers her sincere
condolences to her seasonal sibling
the while covertly prodding the
audience to disown Winter and
exuberantly cheer on Spring, her
gentle, cleansing rains and verdant
grasses under the blessed sun urging
flowers to rise again in the exquisite
triumph of resurrection from slumber.

The triumph of freshness, colour
and gorgeous texture over the monotony
of single-toned winter. As grumpy
Winter bids his final farewell, Spring
treats her besotted, captivated audience
with a randomly unusual hailstorm
relentlessly assailing trusting spring
blooms, covering the landscape in a
transparent glitter of ice, silencing
the welcome of returning birdsong.

Guests In Their House

Well, then, are the campacinos
happy in the Paradise they
inhabit in the southern third
of the North American Continent,
blessed so abundantly with
sumptuous white, sandy beaches
endless cerulean skies and an
overheated disk of sun along with
fabulously warm temperatures?

Don't they have it all; absent
wealth, hugely dependent on the
foreign currency left so thoughtfully
behind by sun-adoring vacationers
whom locals zealously serve to
fulfill their every desire, so their
children may eat. Entire families
of privilege embark on these trips
as the northern aggregate of the
continent empties its schools.

The country is mired in a wholesale
murder spree, its psychopathic
drug cartels bellicosely claiming
territory, slaughtering one another,
innocent bystanders, unlucky
politicians and fearful military
alike in a mad paroxysm of nihilistic
rage, pocketing the proceeds
of their crimes, unperturbed.

But at those glorious, grand resorts
carefully guarded and geared to
smothering guests with the comfortable
presentations of splendidly exotic foods,
exhilarating drink and sunny leisure,
not a scintilla of disquiet will disturb
the luxurious beneficence of an economy
so desperate to survive its travails.

The avails of the labouring class eking
their paltry living, teaching their children
to become moderately aspirational while
dodging the malevolent intentions of pitiless
cartel gangs creates a lesson in anguished
endurance, hope and gratitude for the
good fortune that allows them to greet
another day, fatuously bowing before the
entitled demands of the tourist dollar.