Creation, Time and Space

An imposing cathedral of
unparalleled beauty sheathed in
crystalline grandeur lifts its
imperious grace to the ceiling
of the sky velvet with approaching
night, a halo of moon and the
boldness of stars impassively
observing a landscape unlike
their own of frozen gases and
ancient minerals. The one below
with its living atmosphere
responds to the distance of its
sponsor-sun in a frigid pause
of the clamour of growing
things unlike the inert nothingness
of cold and distant space. This
most familiar place of time and
seasons, liveliness and curiosity
a highly specialized experiment
by nature in randomized creative
adventure. And so, her creations
look up and peer beyond the
darkness of the unknown, certain
of discovery and revelation.

Impenetrably Mysterious

The relentless series of snowfalls
finally scatter themselves in a wan
flurry of exhaustion, satisfied with
the effects of their seasonal decor.
All that might seem sinister in a
leaf-shorn forest now generously
cloaked in pristine white. The sky,
reflecting the arras below, its own 
shade of white, all absorbed in the
shimmering, glimmering presence
of winter. Though it is still yet
afternoon, dusk claims the remains
of the day, adding mystery and a
suspense of furtive activity from
the forest understory to skyward
aerial reaches; of nature's creatures
settling under that plush white
sound-absorbing comforter betraying
the tracks of the residents below
and above. All, that is, but the
raptors and the night-hunting carnivores
whom the dark of night and the
creeping shadows on the snow
alert them to take swift and deadly
advantage of the comforted unwary.

Comfortless Power

The forest has been embraced
in a thick white comforter
of snow, a sight to behold, soon
followed by raging bellows of
blasting wind hurtling daggers
of ice-pelleted curtains across
the suddenly transformed landscape
from gentle beauty to raging 
fury. In the city traffic is
stock-still in the shock of
immobility, the roads a thick,
slick menace of ice. City residents
huddle in misery by candlelight
as their homes become unheated
caverns of despair. Frantic civic
efforts to defray winter's sullenly
morose excess pits frail human
ingenuity against pitiless nature,
casually reintroducing her creatures
to the reality of imperial puissance.

Heavensent Alternatives

The small unkempt crossbreed, 
overweight to the point of gross
ungainliness may appear a poor 
specimen of canine pride to a
critical appraiser, but to her
beaming owner, she is a joy to
behold, a classic of her species,
a beloved companion, a trusted
confidant. The small dog manages
to further compromise her appearance
with constant skinny dips into a
befouled, static ditch-stream
carrying off rural effluent, all the
while barking in an ecstasy of
rhapsodic transport at the pleasure
derived from her devotion to water.
Came the winter months, the
dishevelled little dog looked in 
vain for the familiarity of the
waterway, frozen and overlaid
with snow. Until it dawned that 
she can indulge alternately
burrowing into the plush depths of
newfallen snow, its purity and lack
of wretched odours, absent chemical
runoff, somehow forgivable.

 

The Land In Winter

Like an enchantress of ancient legend
Nature herself has thrown a veil of 
surpassing beauty on the world, an
all-enveloping skein of falling snow,
gossamer-slight and iridescent white
to softly muff the winter landscape,
so comforting that no sound is heard
as the forest rests in its winter slumber
of renewal. The waterway weeping
across the forest floor is stilled and
tranquil, its surface a glassy floor of
ice, masked by new-fallen snow. There,
an opening in the ice, and there, the
trail of an emerged muskrat, tail
trailing in the luxury of snow. And wait!
There is sound behind snowy boughs
where a nuthatch shares haven with a
flock of chickadees trailing the trunk
of a spruce, flicking from branch to branch.
From a far off distance another sound,
piercing yet dim, haunting the white
miracle as the whistle of a train clarifies
its ghostly journey over a hidden track.

Entertainment

There's sublime irony
in the North American
television public selecting
both Holocaust and
All in the Family as their
hands-down favourites.

The lovable bigot
is our Everyman,
a symbol whose rantings
all deplore, are amused by, 
recognize in the other guy.

The holocaust horror
is the fairy-tale in reverse;
fascinating, repellent,
bearing no relation whatever
to Everyman's foibles.

The one elevated to
delightful eccentricity
the other to a muted aberration,
a fallible error
in human behaviour --
all relating to 'them'.

We're just innocent
spectators in this game
of hunters and hunted;
entertained by it all.

My Winter Garden

Cloistered now for the duration
of winter, well blanketed by snow,
fixed in the icy grip of frozen soil,
my garden rests, immobile, quite
comfortable in its deep, restorative
slumber awaiting the signal of
Spring, to return to its natural,
exuberant growing stages of 
amazing floral abundance, in an
excess of vigour and glee at the
return of its sovereign prospects
even while it permits me the fiction 
of Mistress Gardener. Deep in depths
of winter's onslaughts of icy sleet and
frozen-tipped evergreens, I glance
musingly about my home, drinking 
in at every turn the kaleidoscopic
colour and form, the garden transposed
onto windows of shimmering delight,
my very own indoor winter garden.

Winter Blizzard

The night atmosphere is never
so dark and calmly still that it
cannot stir itself from the complacency
of a monotone to suddenly instruct
the heavens to loose a gossamer veil
of delicate ice crystals, bewitching
in minuscule variety and shimmering
light to relieve the encompassing
blank canvass of the nighttime hours.
Nor can it predict with any degree
of accuracy what will follow when
it so bestirs the creative elements
of nature. Invoking the privilege 
allotted to wind and to winter chill
entering the landscape to also
present their alternatives to a silently
quiescent night. Introducing the
wild bellowing of cyclonic windbursts
scattering and shattering the
metronomic orderliness of falling
snow, freezing the arras in a
photographic likeness of hell freezing
over; night starkly transformed.

Desperately Seeking Refuge

Pity, such a tenuously threadbare
link as fragile as a silk cord
binds us to the treasured fiction
of universal morality. Yet millions
of people desperate for survival uproot
themselves from all that has the 
comfort of familiarity and tradition
to escape a conflict their government
and its opponents pursue, with civilians
as the target. Their neighbours with
untold wealth use it to provide the
warring factions with munitions
loftily choosing to bypass extending
offers of haven and humanitarian aid
leaving those petty details to the
far-off bleeding hearts whose 
charitable empathy for the hunted
and the haunted can be cleverly
exploited to aid those whose lives
are of little concern to the masters
of imperial controlling destiny.

My Secret Garden

My garden permits me the sweet
fiction that it is my very own
labour of tenderness that encourages
the fragrantly colourful blossoms
to erupt every spring on trees and
shrubs welcoming the growing season.
The profound sensuous pleasure of
greeting summer's succession of
flowers does indeed a pleasurable
summer make. I imagine the splendour
of delicate form and texture, the
exquisite grace and beauty of the
garden a reflection of my personal
Eden. I glance abstractedly through
the windows of my home, and see 
bright foliage filling the observable
lens of my proud eye. At night I
restlessly prowl the garden, private,
intensely intimate, flowers exuding
their sweet bouquet, glowing in the
light of the admiring stars. The garden
tires of my incessant homage and
chooses to chastely withdraw her
alluring presence. And there am I, 
stricken, the garden taking shelter
from my adoring gaze, under a
shielding buffer of winter snow.

It's An Ill Wind

Thought yesterday was a weather
misery, did you? When, though
you felt you had bundled more than
adequate to the thermometer reading
and visual clues you nonetheless
felt, out on a jolly woodland jaunt 
trail circuit you must have strolled
accidentally nude, into a walk-in
freezer and yours was only one of
many pale, white forms shivering 
in a copse of corpses, taking slow,
painful breaths of frozen carbon monoxide.
Ah, well then, welcome to today! More
frigid, wind-blustering, weather, utterly 
merciless, with ice daggers reaching deep 
into your lungs, face rouged from the 
deadly skin-cell-freezing cold hurled by
that ferocious wind. A timely reminder
of winter, as though you'd forgotten.

The Winter-Night Forest

They have embarked on a wild
and wicked rampage through
the frigid, silent forest under a
frozen sapphire sky, stars dangling
like precious jewels on the evening
dress of night. In the woods there
is light, shimmering pale and pink,
snow muffling the forest floor
reflecting the sky, the light-bloom
of nearby cities competing with
the heavenly bodies to illuminate
that great dome of the heavens. A
nasty, spiteful alliance prowls the
forest. Bare masts of naked trees
reach their dark limbs to the sky
as though imploring nature to call
off her servants of winter misery.
For it is wretched cold, sinister wind
and icily drizzling snow that celebrate
their freedom to inflict misery on all
living things, permeating the landscape
with the deadly reality of their malice.

Fondly Used

The fresh patina of newness
is extremely pleasing to behold,
quite admirable in its sparkling
brightness of sterling presentation.
The assurances in newness of purity,
reliability, functionality and pristine
beauty enthralls and delights. We
regard new with tenderness, as
when we view the sweet gestures
of innocence and discovery in the
very young. Recalling when we
ourselves were new, absorbed in
our newness, fixated on it, eager
to advance our youth into experience
and yes, age. Not, however, unpleasantly
aged, for wrinkles and creases, subtly
malfunctioning senses and halting
mobility hold no appeal whatever.
Which, just incidentally, is an
impression shared by the no-longer 
new, whose well-used faculties have 
become worn and unreliable, themselves 
now ever so appreciative of past 
opportunity, gazing now with frankly
tender regard upon the innocent new.

Eternal Youth

Those convinced that self-absorbed
vanity is the sole precinct of the
young are not wrong, nor are they
necessarily correct. Take the pretty
young sales clerk, arrow-straight body
slender in a tuxedo-styled jacket tightly
topping slender trousers, almost
tripping over her insubstantial self
in eagerness to be of service, giggling
self-deprecatingly over her sweet
clumsiness, perhaps anticipating an
understanding chuckle from the
stoutly aged pair confronting her 
over the jewellery showcase. Their
blank, grey frowns restore the young
woman to the sobriety of her service
and she withdraws one tray of
sparkling gem-laden rings after
another, for the sharp-eyed appraisal
of the dowdily-clad connoisseurs
the elderly husband silent but approving,
prepared to fully indulge the conceit of
the woman whose girth and passive-
aggressive entitlements of age and
circumstance match his own. Each 
seeing memory fashion an illusion 
for their eyes only of a time and an
intimate conquest that informs them
evermore of blissfully eternal youth.

Enticing Landscapes

In the silent woods a golden
light falling from the sun
blazing in an ocean-blue sky
scatters a rainbow of refracted
colour from snow lofting the
forest floor. This is the peaceable
kingdom of hawks and nuthatches,
chickadees and woodpeckers
who flicker through the festive
green boughs of evergreens
sparkling back ice-stars at
the sky. In the snow-muffed
silence no human presence appears.
In the mall, fake blood-red spruces
sparkling with white lights blaze
back at the bright overhead lighting
as festive holiday ornaments
festoon the marble-floored spaces
thick with shoppers, motivated
by the season, the music and
alluring signage to !save! on gifts
by buying trinkets !on sale! as a
mass hysteria of social custom
overwhelms vacant-eyed people
struggling for quality of life.

He's Only A Dog

Really now, think of it; he simply
is not aware he's only a dog. A
lovely dog, to be sure, a loyal companion
easy to please, always there prepared to
listen, to offer empathy, never unwanted
advice. The perfect companion, but
he's only a dog. He is tall and darkly
handsome -- a chocolate Lab. His
attention focused on her. Except,
needless to add, when they're in 
the woods and he joyously lopes 
along the trails, chasing squirrels.
But he faithfully returns to the one 
he loves, for he's only a dog. She gives
him hope for the future but he has no
inkling. He hasn't a clue that he has
epilepsy and that she stretches her income
for his medication. He has no idea that
his nine-year-old haircoat has become
threadbare because of allergies to the
medication that saves his life. She
can acquire for herself a winter coat
from second-hand shops but he goes
first class in a costly, double-snug winter
coat. Does he really care? Not much.

Comfort

She is a large woman,
big-boned, glossy long dark hair,
a sensuous look about her. On
her own, but sporadically on
occasion trying out life in a
boyfriend-tandem, now that her
daughter has struck out to fashion
life on her own. She is anything
but naive herself, has a fairly
good grasp on the nature of 
human emotions, failings and
proclivities. After all is said
and done, she has, in fact,
seen it all from her observation
post on the law side opposite
prison bars. She smiles readily,
is given to warm friendliness
with others, but finds the most
reliable companionship and the 
comfort of understanding civility
in the casual company of her
needy but independent rescue dogs.

The Sleeping Forest

One of those days it is, a still
landscape of winter in progress, a
hiatus between fiercely piercing winds
making ill alliance with a penetrating
icy atmosphere following a series of
snowfalls leaving all innocently
white blanketed and postcard perfect.
Everything in this season is 
ephemeral and hauntingly lovely
distanced from the vicious storm.
When a gentler aura pervades in a
moderating time between an onslaught
and the merest breeze lifts a ghostly
skein of snow from tree to forest floor
and a copse of symmetrical spruces
are sugared with icy snow glittering
their magic presence on a spectacular
white arras, perfection is attained.
When, through the filtered light of late
afternoon the bright, diffused warmth
of the sun hanging in a cloud-fleeced sky
breaks splendidly through the
collective screened masts of the
sleeping forest's leafless colony.

Rest, Then, In Peace

No man can be cherished and
heralded as a fallen archangel,
for though goodness may
describe his heart and his soul
he is but a man in whom was
vested all the faults, no less,
of fallible mortals. Those
capable of surpassing 
expectations are held to
deserved great acclaim but they
falter in resolve and display
the very unfortunate traits
that vexatiously hinder most
from achieving that sublime
state of altruistic justice. Those
we worship and acclaim as
outstanding exemplars of the 
finest nature humankind may
aspire to are feted for their
humble exploits befitting champions
but they die with a conscience 
aware of their all-too human failings
as their compromises between
supra and human collide and
they succumb, tarnishing self.

Fable

This is not a fanciful work
of serialized fiction. Nor is it
the result of sentimental
reminiscence. It is a true story
of steadfast love and the
comfort of tender assurances.
When they were so young and 
new to the world about them
they were already sturdily 
possessive and protective of
one another. He, in particular,
would reassure her, brush away
her fears for he was there to
protect her from harm. And
none ever befell her, for she
trusted him. They embarked on
a prolonged voyage of discovery
in a tandem of curiosity and
aspiration. They truly were an
inseparable pair. Does joy and
contentment insult fortune and
invite the impish reaction of fate
to turn happiness to sorrow? It
can, and does in many stories, 
but this one remained unblemished
by misfortune. He smiles at her
still, speaks softly with love, and
in the quiet night hours, tells
her fabulous tales into infinity.

Winter's Options

The sometimes overwhelming
pastoral gloom of a winter
day has its options. Those
transcendent scenes of
ephemeral beauty can appear
to the housebound like sinister
humps of icy distress threatening
broken bones. Like chameleons
perceptions change to suit
one's moods; a gleaming
winter playground generously
shared by the creatures of the
forest who accommodate themselves
to nature's offerings, unaware
they have no other options.

We May Yet Hope

We tried our best
and believed
we taught our children
sensitivity, intelligence,
appreciation toward
the benefits of hard work
and a fine aesthetic sense.

The shock!
to discover
on the dart board
passed so many times,
never before noticed,
stapled photographs
at points of 
highest benefit,

She to whom
we owe allegiance
smiling deathlessly,
her face pockmarked
by unerringly
directed darts.

And there they are,
the Prime Minister
and all those elected
to high posts in government;
irremediably scarred,

barely recognizable.
Does this behaviour
defy patriotism?
Have we raised a
viper's nest of anarchists?

(c.1979)

The Divine Director

This day was born in mischief,
cautioning dawn to bypass
daylight and proceed directly to
twilight. The freshening wind,
prepared to clear the platinum vault
of the sky from days of snow
sighed through snow-laden trees
as Nature's theatre disclosed the plot.
Colour the sky white, tinted with
hazy grey to complement the layers
of snow humping the forest floor.
Dim the lights to emphasize
the drama of relentless dusk,
lightly sprinkle with snow and
slightly shake the landscape's contents,
Nature lectured as she busied herself
meticulously assigning appropriate
roles to her skilled principals
whose expertise in their field is
unparalleled, capable of divine
gentleness as well as brutal fury
in instant response to stagecraft.

 

Finding Faith

Psychologists and behaviourists and 
those wise in the ways of the 
emerging persona baffled by those
famed raging hormones label it
sublimation, a focus transferred from
the confusing carnal animal inheritance
of the human animal to the passion
and emotion of hypocrisy revealed in
the aggregate of social custom and the
conceit of species superiority. Voice
vibrating with the intensity of 
outraged indignation the girl verging
on womanhood rails against the unjust
treatment of non-human animals. She
sheds tear of anguish when her peers
corner a frightened mouse in their
classroom to triumph in its casual dispatch,
amusing others no end at her sympathy
for the tiny creature. She composes a
sternly unforgiving essay on the right
to dignity and fair treatment of 
animals destined for slaughter, a topic
scorned in her rural community. 
Reasoning her classmates should care
if animal husbandry and the livestock
industry use methods of housing and
inoculation of pathogens that will
inevitably pollute the water table and
infiltrate human bodily health, she is the
converted, preaching to the heathen, 
alone and alienated in her faith. And yes,
of course, she has transformed herself,
an absolute vegetarian, shunning gore.


 

 

That Peerless Stage

The timeless, silent struggle to
prevail when dawn appears to shuffle 
dark night off the stage of the waking
world, like an ageing actor insisting
on yet another !encore! bow to his
pantomiming admirers, was solved
this morning to the satisfaction of
neither of the principal players of the
drama, as the sun struggled in vain
to penetrate an enveloping ice fog
hanging mysteriously on the atmosphere,
sending icily dripping fingers of sparkly
hoar frost to coat each twig and branch
of every shrub and tree sitting upon the
voluminous billowing snowpack on
the ground below. The world transformed
from the opaque black trance of a
star-stippled night to the exquisite magic
of an ice-crystal-infused ephemeral 
fog with its countless fairy-light sources
obscuring reality and presenting a
staged choreography of winter's prized 
luminous display; a stage setting no other 
impresario of delightfully imaginative creation 
could possibly strive in hope to emulate.

Neighbours

Years ago the huge old pine
resident at the bottom of the
hill just before the land dips further
to bank an old ravine creek, had a
resident of its own, a scolding red
squirrel badgering all passers-by,
but now long gone. Its habitation
came into the possession of a
wild bee colony which had no 
need to warn off trespassers. They
too are now gone and in their
place a pair of small black squirrels
named Heckle and Jekyll by a 
local wag, assumed proprietary
status taking up residence over the
mean winter months, aloof and
entitled to their secure nest and
the mindful homage to their
resilience left daily in the old trunk's
cracks and crevices to see them
through to the following spring.

Still Life: Whippet & Man

They make a fetching pair
with their obvious zest for life,
their exuberance on the woodland
trails packed with newfallen snow,
on a cold, crisp, sunny afternoon,
he in snowshoes and her fine
shapely legs bare to the frigid air.
Both are ecstatic with the winter
landscape. They are young, lean
as whippets, and exceedingly engaged.
She whips through the snow-laden
trees happily abandoned to love
of life, traversing double the area
he manages, moving swiftly over
the puffy snow. Among the birds that
flit through the trees, a tiny kinglet
stops to observe them. The wind
looses snow patches from their perch
on dark branches, showering a veil
of snow on the pair intent on claiming
their place in this world of light
and snow palaces, a publicist's dream
scenario, if nature needed one.

A Crystal Ballroom

It's a spectacularly mesmerizing
sight to watch in silence
as the night sky releases
countless specks of frozen
moisture, gleaming white and
phosphorescent, as though the
Universe has suddenly decided
it will no longer suspend
the infinity of stars that
brightly sequence its cold, dark
vastness. There they drift, in
an endless dance of lamplight-
enhanced glory outside my 
window as I prepare for bed. 
And when I awaken briefly in
time's wee hours, there they are,
still gently tumbling, casting an
otherwordly glow of warm peach
light to illuminate my bedroom, 
as in a dream. No dream, the 
morning affirms, as I, fresh from
sleep, view my world transformed
to a blazing crystal ballroom.

Ephemera

The uncertainty, she moans
with the impressively full
experience of her seventeen years,
is miserable. The self-assured young
woman who scoffs at her grandmother's
quaint but bothersome nudging
concerns and incessant reminders
which have never stopped the dark-haired
scholar from seeking advice from the
grey-haired lover of literature
now laments this waiting game
she incurred by studying which
centres of higher learning offered
the best academic courses in her chosen
field, guaranteeing future employment
and a satisfying life of goals achieved,
meticulously selecting minors and majors,
anxiously making application, unprepared
to live on the tenterhook of aspirations
in limbo. To the granddaughter's sigh
of exasperation, wishing to get on
with life, the grandmother reminds
how hers and her daughter's lives will
be diminished by the absence of the
aspiring scholar, studying far from home,
and they too must submit to a
longer-term agony of expectation.