Neither Shame Nor Sorrow

In a shocking criminal conspiracy
mandated by lust and greed we two lovers
of otherwise irreproachable repute made a
shameless pact to become criminal deviants.
I, the Eve to his Adam, the fruit of my
desire lay within temptation's reach; we
sternly tasked by evil intent to grasp the
object and make it ours.  Mine, and of
course, his also.  In the grip of a feverish
intent to commit the unthinkable, with
scant thought to morals, much less civil
responsibility, I played Bonnie, scoping out
exit and entrance while my Clyde swiftly
secured the journal, ripped out the 
ever-so-entrancing page, folded, pocketed it
with a professionally swift deftness that 
filled my palpitating heart with pride, and
we departed the scene of the crime.  The
coveted recipe now mine, I set about to
bake those delectable, giant coconut-lime
cupcakes with white chocolate frosting,
and they were indeed sublime.  That 
purloined page sufficient unto the day, we
jointly delectated over the toothsome
morsels - secret, covert act - of our sin.

Life As Trial

He is resolute and determined,
wincing his way through the pain
he suffers, willing his lean, spare body
barely clothed against the winter wind,
to forge ahead, propelling himself
through the fresh-snowed woodland 
trails, refusing to submit to age and his
body's weary breakdown.  He has been
ill-served, Max has, by relentless time
and merciless nature that ages without
remorse that which was so latterly 
youthfully vibrant.  Now Max, slight
of build and health-beleaguered, must
daily wrestle his wife's inert bulk from
bedroom to bathroom with time out to
exercise his own spare frame.  His life
has not reflected the exquisite perfection
of his native country's fabled clockwork
mechanism.  Gall bladder latterly
excised so soon after heart bypass
surgery, he yet awaits joint replacement
and still gets on with the rhythm and
rhymes of a life well lived; a trial.

Doomed

Friend, if you go out in the woods
this night, you can expect a big surprise.
For this will not be the benign Nursery
Tale woods of child's delight.  The
nocturnal woods are a predator's playground.
The eyes you may encounter reflecting the
moon's silvery sheen are those of raptor
and relentless hunter sniffing the
panicked fear of their prey. This is not
the diurnal woods where songbirds
praise the miracle of creation and
small, adorable furred creatures leap
and frolic in leafy bowers.  This is a 
dark and eerie landscape of shadowy
figures hidden by dark, complicit night,
where victims cower and are in due time
pitilessly devoured, not spared the agony
of the wait in a suspended animation
of unalloyed terror, instinct informing
through their inchoate fear that dark
infinity will soon replace the bright
insouciance of tomorrow's dawn.  Friend,
this is no Teddy Bear's picnic, this
bleak imperative of primal need.

Of Specious Design

What a charming and utterly
disarming scene; one's arrival 
avidly anticipated by creatures
unskilled in conveying their
appreciation of the presence of
those not of their own species,
affirming that there exists complex
interrelations, a symbiosis of gain
and pleasure and survival in Nature's 
ineffable design, her formulae and
procotols puzzling but orderly and 
clockwork-precise, from the
revolution of planets around their suns
to the evolution of various strains
of animal life upon Earth, evincing
their intellectual powers.  We
entertain ourselves, we of the
highest ordained order on the
evolutionary scale, by offering
peanuts to squirrels, a lower order
of mammalian life and they accede
to our little conceit, deigning to be fed
in lieu of their quite capable abilities
to fend for themselves amid plenty.
Be it therefore well understood that
humanity's self-designated status
as the superior among all is specious.

Our Time

We are not meticulous in
our timing.  Punctuality no 
longer orders our lives.  Still
orderly, the progression of the
events that comprise the activities
of our days, but time is an element
of the imagination we feel free
to interpret on impulse, as we
spontaneously respond to our
inner needs.  Responsible
to ourselves, at a lifetime cycle
of the elder years, we have 
become, if not without care,
then perhaps careless of
time's tyranny.  It may remind
us occasionally that it has
picked up pace, threaten to race
along leaving us stranded
but we are content with the
knowledge that time is endless
and where that portion is of
what we have lived, there is yet
more to come, and we sigh,
pleasure surging through us both
for here we are, together.

Deo Gracias

It is a truly splendid object, one whose 
glorious presence, perched upon my
table, offers pleasured awe.  It is, in fact,
a book, a treasury of writing offering 
complementary facsimile plates of 
Medieval art.  There appear on its
smooth, silky, gilded pages poetry
by that famous wordsmith, Anonymous.
But others also, whose names are
familiar, like Malory, Chaucer, Boccaccio.
They have been illustriously paired with
exquisite art of the period; Books of
Hours, virginal Madonnas, glowing
miniatures recalling Raphael, Bosch, 
van Eyck, van de Weyden, Bruegel the 
Elder.  Sumptuous and utterly sublime, 
this treasury is mine to wonder at the 
genius of human art and invention, an 
wonderfully inspired compendium taking 
its inspiration from legend interpreted by 
Lucas Cranach with Anonymous expressing 
deep gratitude for humankind's blessed
fortunes finding wisdom, speech, invention, 
learning and alas, base emotions as well: 
Adam lay y-bounden in a bond, 
Four thousand winters thought he not too long. 
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, 
As learned men find written in their Book.  
Had not the apple taken been, 
Never would our Lady have been Heaven's Queen. 
Blessed be the time the apple taken was, 
Therefore we may sing, 'Deo gracias'.

Just So

Contrarily and wholly explicably
the meek are not in the process of
inheriting the Earth, nor do their
future prospects look encouraging
should they anticipate, on the highest
stated moral and theological authority
that they must, should, or will.  Not
now, not soon, not ever.  They are
those who defer, who deny entitlements,
demur to praise themselves, apologize
profusely if they are held to blame,
and silently endure.  They will
observe, as always, uncomplainingly
as the self-entitled loud-mouthed boors
and bullies of the world rape its bounty.

Yisroel

Wisdom is as wisdom does.
It is, above all, wise not
to make enemies, lest
malevolence fall one's way.
What inspired an ancient sage
to convince his tribe
to be a light of moral
forbearance and good acts
of social kindness, when
human nature is such that it
reviles and resents such
guidance from others
not of their own tribe?

The inherited genius of a
people may inspire emulation
and wreak wonders in
science, medicine and art
but the prize given is bitter gall.
The wise, helpless to thwart envy,
anger and hatred attempt their
disarming solutions feigning
modesty and humility but
the outcome is inevitable; 
the malign designs called
Final Solutions....

Which, though succeeding
to an astonishingly atrocious
degree, are not as final as
planned, inspiring enemies to
recalibrate their genocidal formulae
to hope eventually to achieve
their goal while the wise draw
upon their existential experience of
endurance to fend for themselves.

Understanding full well that
those not their enemies often
find themselves in reluctant
polarizing sympathy
with those that are, and their
struggle to survive against the
forces of determined mass
annihilation is their battle alone.

Clouds Like Sheep

Long gone the mist that introduced 
the early morning to this day
its shimmering mystery presaged by
last evening's glorious sweeping
burst of radiant red from the setting sun.
The sun has returned, more modest in
its brilliant presentation, sharing the
sky with fat wisps of billowing clouds
like sheep nibbling the atmospheric
ozone filtered high above, verily a
truly splendid landscape of dreams.

Night

The dark shadow of night falls
softly over the day, shifting
the diurnal rhythm, silencing
the atmosphere to a muted reflection
of the day transformed in a
mysterious interplay of time and
space to a barely recognizable
facsimile of the familiar, urging
confusion and fear to a grand
entrance as the nocturnal hours
tick by, and Earth turns its face
to the glowingly emerging sun.

Creatures of the Woods

They are utterly disarming in their
shy trust of us, those generations of small
wild creatures, recognizing us as distinct
from others who invade their territory.
Anxious to confront us, receiving their
daily due of nuts.  They are sleekly
well-furred, black and grey and red.
It is the former who approach engagingly,
the latter who prefer to evade then pounce
and withdraw, prize retrieved, pride and
security intact.  Ah, the greys and the
blacks however, are bold and do not
hesitate to approach with their direct
appeal, courageously facing in close
physical contact with imposingly large
creatures not of their own species.  We
observe their hurried, purposeful approach,
dancing around us as we respond.  We 
hear behind us the rustle of desiccated
leaves, tannin fragrancing the air.  They
have no quarrel with the crows, dark and 
alert, who raid the cache spots in their turn.
Those delightfully wild but cleverly
social creatures choose also to overlook
our little canine companion who languidly
reproaches them at times for their impudence
their lack of timidity, but they nimbly bypass,
then skirt back for additional offerings of
nuts to swell their private commissaries.

Monoceros, the Unicorn Constellation

 Fable

Why is the Unicorn graceful and beautiful 
in his otherworldly persona, so shy of appearance?  
Modesty becomes him. He has no wish to ravish 
the senses of those who observe his splendid
presence, so thoughtfully, he spares us the
apparition of his gleaming white flanks, his
powerful gait, his royal head with its crowning
glory.  Compassion lights the deep, dark pools
of his eyes.  And so, he keeps his wise counsel
and remains sedately aloof.  Were I to see him
I would enquire quietly whether he is not lonely,
inhabiting his isolated world.  He is, yes,
beyond unique, but would a life companion not
elevate his soul?  Imagine my surprise if this
bewitching creature gently informed me that
I am but a figment of his imagination that he
sometimes conjures to relieve his endless tedium.
I represent a fabled creature, one of many
his fabulous imagination occasionally addresses.

You Say...?

The columnist who writes for Lifestyles
quite outdid herself today.  Her column 
an exercise of praise for the bold,
adventurous palate.  Not for her the 
same-old urban genteel dinner fare.
Her admiration waxed large for her
host, an excellent cook and gourmand,
apart from his professional credentials in
high finance.  Setting the bar high for her
upscale set, she praised the delicacy he
put before his guests, a dish steeped in
extra virgin olive oil, chopped garlic,
thyme and well-peppered to great acclaim.
The meat white and sumptuously toothy,
the bones fine, a mystery source.  But then
no mystery at all; to awaken the jaded
palettes of his guests, he had ventured out
that very morning to trap grey squirrels,
skin and marinate their tender flesh
for their delectation.  They are, after all,
the thrilled and learned columnist wrote
for the titillated edification of her readers,
only vermin - of a kind our forebears,
hunting for kill, regularly supplied old
reputable larders with.  Not mine, never mine.
These are the hugely sentient creatures that
recognize my quotidian purpose, greeting
me and communing their desires as I
dole out peanuts this approaching
winter, for their most particular larder.

The Play's The Thing

This is the sere, stern face of
November.  Trees stand on the 
landscape darkly denuded, 
colour drained, leaving the 
chiaroscuro of sketches swiftly drawn,
sans the rainbow of details.  All is
a theatre of changing acts, the
sky a curtain of striated clouds
shimmering silver behind the
blinded sun.  Red-tailed hawks
sit astride country roads, watchful.
On the wide screen above, 
geese rise in a uniform pleating,
from ploughed fields beyond to
the steel-grey river.  No wind to
challenge their noisy formation,
but that bone-piercing cold has
set preparatory to the season's
penultimate staging heralding
the frozen close of the play.

Fables (and Myths)

Yes, I know: there is a time and a
place for everything. Paraphrased
from scriptural authority: for all things
there is a season.  I dream that I would
murmur thank you for inviting me to
your place, I had a lovely time.  To whom
would I address that...none other than
my daughter.  If I had a daughter.
But one may dream.  And I dream I had
a daughter - who might not have
appreciated all those meals I prepared
for her in her growing years and much
beyond - deigning to honour me in my
old age by carefully preparing for me
a repast she has designed with her
loving hands.  I would so very much
appreciate that; my heart would soar.
Having no daughter I may still indulge
in the fantasy of imagining: what if.

Life Lesson

The large black dog walking her master, 
joyously thrust her shaggy presence 
upon the wooded trails, snuffling everything
she encountered as though in a canine
candy shop, overwhelmed by the
sights, the sounds, the fragrance of
uninterrupted nature.  Eager to befriend
and embrace everything and everyone
and her companion felt graced in her
natural beatific persona, somehow
finding in her presence, imbibing her
frantic love of life his too had gained
inestimable value.  He witnessed her
approach toward a tiny terrier, heard it 
snarl in response to her buffoonish 
invitation to play together, admired her
resolve to rise above the cranky response
by proffering another antic offer, then
drew back as the terrier launched
itself affixing its teeth in her sloppy shank.
Breathing a sigh, the large dog turned
on its back in submission, a heartfelt
apology from the frenetic goodwill 
of an open soul to the sour belligerence
of one vastly preferring its isolation.

Thank You, Thank You

She minces no words in her
contemptuous description of her
high school guidance counselor whose
personal desire to graduate with his
degree from a local college and return
to his roots in the small town do not
reflect her aspirations.  He
recommends for her perusal
web sites for universities he
approves of judged by the attractive
and so neat accessibility, urging
her to explore them, studiously 
setting aside those universities whose
degrees she has already explored and
chosen.  The teacher counselor
is at a loss how to enter online portals
and use the web sites, so the perplexed
and very vexed student offers useful
lessons.  Her hard-earned marks she
is proudly dependent on also summarily
dismissed as "fairly good".  Her queries
to assist in applying for appropriate
scholarships an outright puzzle to this
education specialist tasked with
absorbing students' present, and
guide them toward their future.  She
has learned the full measure of
frustration, her resentment and scorn
incremental, growing in furious disgust
each time these sessions in
academic uselessness are scheduled.

How Sweet It Is

Not incessantly, of necessity
but frequently enough to 
say, Hi Bubbie, what's up?
And to obliquely relay the
impression that the voluminous
contents of her elderly mind
remain valued, when the
granddaughter who knows
everything a teen edging toward
the age of majority explains 
she's reached a crossroad of
confusion in an assignment
and would appreciate some help,
even if in not so many words.
And the grey head nods to 
herself, listens carefully, and
just as carefully, counsels.

Just...Asking

What is sentience, self-awareness,
consciousness?  What is the
vastness of the Universe?  What
caused Nature?  What created thought?
What is the human mind?  How is it
that we are imbued with a sense of
enquiry?  Why were we the
chosen above all other organisms
to learn to dream and imagine,
to theorize and to experience, to
unlock so many of Nature's secrets
and call them scientific formulae?
What is sentience - an awareness
of the presence of a threat to 
survival?  What transcends instinct?
Which is of greater potential and
value; emotions or rational intelligence?
Why cannot they be wedded and
welded to reason, trust, verity?

The Devil, You Say!

The raven, that bird of dark mystery,
spreads his midnight wings and
soars into a sky of Stygian gloom
to meet the oncoming storm
fearlessly, uttering its
croaking derision at this
wan display of Nature's
force majeure.  Above, 
R.L. Stevenson scribbles a
bolt of lightning piercing its
hubristic heart.  From another
vantage point, Konrad Lorenz
urges the rook to peck out the
eye of the storm.  And Nature?
Ah, she proudly surveys the
continuum of her flawless creation.

Anyone's Guess

Taller, huskier, perhaps even
more physically fit than the police
who have him splayed over the
hood of one of their patrol vehicles,
his inane grin does nothing to
dispel the notion he is a cretinous
fool.  It was the fire station the
elderly woman had called after
her husband confronted the 
spade-bearded young man.
Hiding himself within a bower 
of November trees, nearby the 
bonfire he had set, smouldering,
intermittent flames shooting skyward.
Pacidly seated on his outspread coat,
taking comfort from a hip flask.
What!?!  A death in the family,
a punctured romance?  Perhaps then,
lost employment, bankruptcy, 
dread medical diagnosis, poor devil.
Or mayhap just plain stupid...?

 Requiem

Ours is a casual affair, this
after-the-ineffable-fact
relationship that has evolved.
We no longer see one another
as often as we once did.
Absence is the prevailing norm
now, though love and regret
are also an integral part of our
shared experience.  Memory
holds us together.  Sometimes
in the still tranquility of night
I see her and she responds.
I yet live, she does not.

 

The Cruelest Month

The penultimate lid on the year has 
arrived, stage left.  Slamming tight
the heavenly gates excluding the sun
to the count of thirty sunrises, equal
sunsets, delaying brightness and light,
welcoming dull, dark, too-short days of
unending gloom.  November's bony
fingers of chill ill will have plucked
the most stubborn of leaves still
clinging to comforting branches.
Wind howls through the hollows of
the bare, unprotected forest.  The
stillness of winter awaiting, eager to
dominate the captured  landscape 
in its hauntingly beautiful, frozen grip.

State of the Nation

The merest of silver reflected from
a rip in the legion of dark clouds
briefly illuminates a flurry of geese
creasing the bruised landscape of the
lowering sky.  A cold, harsh November
wind raises dark grey whitecaps on
the black rippled surface of the
river separating narratives of
historical fallibility, language barriers,
social tensions and blame between
two famously Rashomon-like solitudes.
The atmosphere above grimly reflecting 
a nation's tragic founding stalemate.

All In The Family

My dear, not to give offence ... 
though you do thrive on umbrage ...
but I can quite understand why
your daughter does not call you.
It's her lack of keeping in touch
with me that is puzzling.  In her
place I would do exactly the same.
You have not, after all, been the
ideal concerned, sacrificing,
emotionally supportive guide
you might have been, and please,
spare me the single-mother plaints.
I've no idea how I failed to
impress upon you the imperative
of social, emotional and familial
graces.  What's that?  Led by
example, did I?  Careful, you're
lapsing into shrill mode. What 
are you implying of my mother...?