The Free Agent

Have you heard? Mischief runs on
long, loping legs propelled by a
mind intent on the irresistibility of
adventure. She is excitably manic,
irritably undisciplined, so hugely
intelligent, able effortlessly to evade,
ignore, bypass, forestall explicit
instructions she very well knows 
pertains to her as well as the more
reliably biddable dogs in the pack.
At will she takes unapproved leave to
meander, a free soul, to provoke deer
and skunk, raccoon and porcupine.
When they take their revenge, she
slinks home, surfeit with the avails
of freedom, dank and reeking as she
is angrily washed free of ordure, 
quills plucked, forbidden the sofa,
subdued at last. A state of penance
she knows and they too, soon to
once again dissipate into jaded,
fastidiously faded memory.

Stubborn, or Independent? 

Perhaps sharing the misfortune of the 
impoverished in the world of want without
access to electrical power and the ultra
puissance of computers enabling the link 
to social networking? Perhaps a Luddite,
 refusing modern technology choosing
 reliance on self-discovery? Perhaps
indifference to sharing the feeble
passions of others? Resistant perhaps
to the urge of the herd instinct. Intent
perhaps on preserving the integrity of
solitude and intimacy. Whatever the
reason, fairly unique, part of a distinct
body of those whose personal data
cannot readily be discovered by searching
that sticky web that gathers all within
the den of the predator, an internet
linked so effortlessly, elevating its
inventor to untold wealth through the
persuasive power of entrepreneurial
adventure of innocent facade, yet might 
the interpretation have dark dimensions?

Full Orchestration

Nature's full sturm und drang clashed
and cymballed through the atmosphere
after securely lidding the sky with
impenetrably-locked portals; nothing 
permitted to descend while the symphonic
drama was underway. The mystery deepening
until thunder rumbled its way through
and fierce daggers of light penetrated
the gloom, as both sound and light
threatened entry to huddled homes,
the wind flattening shrubbery, then the
clank and tinkle of the second symphonic
movement introduced the icy fury of
hailstones intent on levelling the frail
stems of summer's flowers to the sodden
soil. The symphony concluded on a 
grace note of continuing rainpatter, the
pizzicato delightful in its ease, lid lifted
on drumbeaten skies and light returned.

The Human Condition

We enter life wise with collective
memory recalled at birth and death,
squalling the grief of alienation,
loneliness that encompasses the
souls of creatures whom nature has
gifted with the survival tool of
gregariousness. Even while belonging
to family and tribe the hovering ghost
of primal fear of the unknown, the
lonely passage through life's corridors
evoked a primitive desire to discover
an all-powerful, protective and
nurturing primogenitor, leading a
brilliant mind to the device of invention
to introduce his grateful followers to
the notion of God, presented in the
extended image of Man, magnified
exponentially. God was then worshipped
for giving life to humankind, for 
offering love and guidance, unseen
but treasured on faith. When trust in
the unseen faded, humankind turned to
nature's aide, science - which gladly
introduced its aide, technology - and
yet another brilliant mind ushered
in the Age of roaming the ethernet to
banish loneliness. And the people, saved
from misery, believed and communed.

Childhood Rhymes

Can she bake a cherry pie,
Billy Boy, Billy Boy,
can she bake a cherry pie,
Charming Billy? Can I help,
offers Charming Billy... But no,
that's fine, won't take long, the
seasonal cherries sitting washed
in the colander, slowly migrating
to the bowl, de-stemmed and
pitted. Again, an offer to
stand by me, and share the
pitting, but no. And finally the
colander is empty and the bowl
is full of ripe, bright cherries,
halved, juices luminous and
fragrant, ready to be baked
into a flaky-crusted pie for
Charming Billy. For him, my
hands are hennaed, a measure of
unstinting love. The pie baked,
redolent and tempting but not
quite as swift as a cat's blink.

Think Again

Ah, you doubters -- no character,
sans personality -- insensate beasts
you claim with typical scorn for
the lesser creatures that inhabit
our world - theirs too. That family
of crows know where we live,
alerts others when we leave our home
to enter theirs and roost above,
handy to swooping down to retrieve
those peanuts left daily in tree
crevices. That small black squirrel
with a shortened tail empties the
shell of its nuts close by us under
a tree, then returns for another,
personally gifted as has become her
due, while we ply our way onward.
And the tiny red squirrel treated 
with daily offerings awaits our
arrival and the subsequent deposit,
then raises its indignant voice to
scold us from lingering, delaying its 
prized lunch, cheeky little scamp.

Rumbling Through

The sublime perfection of a summer day
must be comprised of drowsy heat, the
sun's full prominence in a full-vaulted sky
of shimmering oceanic blue; on the horizon
sheepish puffs of clouds grazing pastorally on
the atmospheric ether, steadily nibbling
away the blue, the curl-haired flock
growing in numbers as the blue is consumed
and the innocence of white transforms the
the clouds fully mature, until they are rams all,
prepared to butt their dark grey heads upon
the firmament itself transformed to a vast
trampling ground of nature's studs bellowing
fierce defiance to their combatant-charged
opponents. The arras is rent by their charges,
electrical impulses leap on the air, the
thunderous assaults of their locked horns
conclude the day in a drama of truly
outstanding proportions, regal and grand
at their impulsive sheepmistresses' command.

Drawn, Irresistibly, Like Moths

Incapable of resisting the impulse
to draw ever closer to the 
flame that has the deadly potential
to destroy them women, like moths,
entrust their destiny to the psychopathic
predator, who like the flame, need
only be there, burning bright in
the promise of warmth, responding
to women's biological needs with
twisted, sinister needs of his own.
Prepared to deliver the excruciating
finality of all-consuming death, a
deep-seated pleasure for the flame, 
indifferent to the anguish of pain and 
finality in the moth's surrender.

Chance Encounter

Hello, she has certainly changed.
Pity how some people just 
let themselves go like that.
Puffy-looking, sallow skin, dank hair.
Not the woman last seen some
while ago, though a mutual
acquaintance had informed, in
passing, their dog had died. But
here's a puppy, a rollicking, sweet
curious little fellow, a real
floppy, silken-haired heart-stealer
and I lean toward her to commend
their superb formula for mending
a broken heart. She asks after our
grandchild, speaks quietly of her
own. We turn to regard the antics
of that powerful hairy little mite
and beam pleasure toward one
another. Casual is our acquaintance
but it does not preclude a parting
hug whose fervour surprises. And
it is only later I learn to my shamed
anguish that those good souls have
recently buried their only son.

From Then To Eternity

Nostalgia night with Randy Bachman
and we're overdrive into memories 
of ourselves so young, so long ago,
it was only yesterday and then it is again,
because you're always saving the
last dance for me. And the first and
the second, as you clasp me close and
in our kitchen, round and round the
island of our dreams my head fits just
where it always has, under that cleft
in your chin, still there, behind that
grey beard, your arms as firm, your chest
as comfortably warm as sixty years ago
when we were young, teenagers in love.

A Word of Advice

Just another, my dear, of life's
many truths, that the elderly feel
obliged to dispense advice. And advice
can be an intensely brittle thing; not
perhaps I can attest, meant to offend,
though at risk of umbrage, I offer my 
deepest admiration first, for those
qualities you own in abundance, only
one of which is enduring. The other
two, youth and beauty, are endearing,
unlike intelligence which does not
fade, but expands. Those who are truly 
intelligent my dear, listen well. It is a 
wonder to me and a profound regret to 
observe that such a nice girl as yourself 
carries a dangerous weapon and uses it 
recklessly. Apart from its status as a weapon, 
you know, your voice is capable of 
producing much that is good and worthwhile 
to yourself and others. Keep it primed by 
all means, if you will, but disarming it and 
using it wholesomely will earn you far
more praise and practical benefit than does
sharpening its edge with venomous spite.

Suffocation

The atmosphere reflecting that of an 
iron foundry, oppressive heat radiating from 
an open-skied sun, relentlessly punishing creatures 
and vegetation alike in its unforgiving excess. 
The wind serves merely to shift the level of 
fieriness from one height of improbable density 
to the next. In the woods a hawk soars above the 
dehydrated trees, foliage wilting in mid-summer 
from green to stressed red and orange. The 
woodland is still with heat-shelter-seeking
animals, exhausted in a primal fiery arras of 
elemental proportions. In the far distance of the 
clear blue sky, faint rumbles tremble the air. 
Soon the ambiance of the sun-struck day dissolves
 to the darkness of night though it is yet not
close to dusk, as pacific blue is replaced by angry 
grey, charcoal thunderheads raging close above. 
So overheated the environment that the heavy 
drops of rain attempting to present as a torrent,
dry as they descend, and though it rains steadily, 
little reaches the forest canopy or its parched floor, 
gasping for relief, suffocating in the Earth's furnace.

The Holocaust Chronicle

It stands apart and beyond in its
pitiless cruelty, though humankind
has never been tasked more deeply
than it could find a response within 
itself to demonstrate amply in the past
that no problem seems to exist with
most people's capabilities in rising
to the challenge of committing
themselves to a participatory action
as a group project in advancing 
atrocities, doing their part, so it
seems, in adding to human history's
vast inventory of denials of the human
rights of others. Ah, said the sages in
their ineffably worldly wisdom:
education is key. The final solution
to address such vicious brutality
is to introduce minds through education
and exposure to the arts, philosophy,
the sciences, a culture of redeeming
social value to augment the sweat
of academic credentials bringing
them the equity of their earning power.
And so, the great experiment was
undertaken by a national socialist
governing nation whose pride in its
cultivated traditions was the envy of 
the civilized world, awaiting results.

A Paean of Praise

The mid-morning sun slants its
warm glow over the garden, an
ephemeral mist of liquid gold
brightening the colours of foliage
in teasing shades of green, the
flower heads of lilies, poppies,
their insouciant freshness a
rapturous vision to the gardener's
eye proudly laying claim to a
nurturing talent that is nature's alone.
But the essence of pride and
perfection a deep-seated conceit so
emotionally charged one imagines
the cardinal's exquisite peal
a rewarding paean of praise.

What's Newsworthy?

Runners sprint alongside Torrestrella fighting bulls as they take the Estafeta curve during the fifth running of the bulls of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

What's New?

Just the news of the day, nothing
terribly unusual, as the United Nations
is addressed by a child insisting that
the world, including her benighted
country, the crucible of modern-day
terrorism invest in books, teachers and
schools for hungry young minds. Oh,
also that a Chinese teen, sprayed by
rescue workers with foam after a plane
crash in the U.S. was unfortunately crushed 
to her death when the firetruck ran over her
prostrate body. And in South Africa,
much regret when 60 young men die,
hundreds more hospitalized resulting
from a national tradition of ceremonial
initiation into manhood, failed. In 
Saudi Arabia protective face masks are
urged on millions embarked on a yearly
Mecca pilgrimage, to counter a deadly 
new virus that adores human contact in vast
crowds. While in Pamplona, again,
terrified bulls are taunted and tortured
in another humane tradition of huge
national pride and international acclaim,
leaving three runners in the maddening
crowd splendidly gored in festival mode.

 

Our Covenant

Neither ritual nor benediction
your daily thanks to me
for pleasing your palate
through the alchemy of
cookery has embellished
our lifetime together. Those
offerings to you are wrapped
in love, to reflect the care
and devotion you lavish
on me, from the morning hour
when I awake to your soft voice
and softer smile to the
evening hour abed when
each day that fades into night
has been gift-wrapped
in a crisp new package of love.

New Hampshire

 

The Garden Party

It's summer, and there was a
party in the garden last night. We
were shut out. Shut in, more to the point,
fast asleep abed when the festivities
to which we were pointedly not invited
took place. We are beyond taking
offence, just one of those things
about social exclusion and exclusive 
cliques. Not our style, after all.

After all our time and effort in the
garden, though, it does affect one,
to be shunned. Everyone but us
romped last night, in nature's playground.
The birds and the bees, moths and
dragonflies, raccoons and squirrels,
garden toads and June bugs.  They

invited the trees and shrubs, flowers
and vines and a good time was had
by all. We know this; everywhere
we looked this morning offered 
plausible evidence of tipsy plants and
warbling birds dabbling in the bird
bath; pearly dew like crystal confetti,
left in the wake of last night's raucous
and very exclusive party scene.

 

Woodland Pastiche

In the near distance the woods echo 
the clamour of a juvenile crow insisting 
he must perish if not fed instantly, constantly. 
Close by the creek rippling in the hollow of
the ravine rises the sad, bare trunk of an elm, 
still alive last summer when a young owl 
and its parent sat together unmoving, 
unblinking, great heads occasionally 
swivelling downward, taking stock. Under 
the rude timbers of a crude bridge nests
a pair of happy flycatchers, and in the 
water below, water striders jolt about 
clumsily, as a dainty, iridescent Damselfly 
launches itself into the air. Beside the creek, 
its gentle banks green with meadow rue 
and jewelweed not yet abloom, anemones 
offer their ephemeral white blossoms to 
the shards of sun glancing through the forest 
canopy. Ah, and there, beside the water, a 
lone goldfinch has flown down, there to                begin its languidly ecstatic toilette.

An Avian Tale

In the ephemeral early morning
stillness of a garden
gently illuminated by the
rising sun casting a golden glow
over green foliage and
flower petals bejewelled by the
night's silken rainfall, a song
sparrow scrabbles, finding a
still, pale moth and triumphantly
beaking its flutter-winged body
swoops atop the garden gate,
softly chirping encouragement
to her fledgling, taking to the air
in an uncertain swirl, not yet
fully the master of its potential,
its tiny perfect body feathered
tight in a minuscule perfect design
of exquisite form and function,
nature's fondly regarded star.

This Is Their Time

LOUAFI LARBI/REUTERS

This Is Their Time

They are the faces of young men
their eyes facing into the camera
those lens captures their earnest attitude
sometimes leavened by the courtesy of
a gracious smile, more often a fractious
scowl, for theirs, after all, is a serious
business, something the camera 
operator, a photo-journalist from some
foreign news agency knows well, for
he is there, in Syria, in Egypt, in Turkey,
Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Iran and
Jordan for that very purpose of capturing
their urgency and the foetid heat of war.
This is their employment, deployed
by the heavens above - for God is great
and God is with them - to do jihad
and to further aspire to the venerated
role of martyrdom. Not all seek the
identical objective but all are inspired.
Some are liberal socialists, others clearly
fanatical mujahideen. Most, though young,
are bearded, swarthy, even black-masked.
They are evanescent in shared determination
to surmount all obstacles in their path to 
reform - or to Sharia, as God calls them
to defend and surrender. Their zealous,
impressionability lends them to their
mission. Their smiling, proud, scowling
defiant visages can be seen, immortalized
on news sites and within books written
by well-read journalists recounting their
news-gathering adventures at great peril
to life and limb. The reader is left to ponder
whether those young faces have become
the sad legacy of youth sacrificed to the
discords and discards of mordant history.

In The Present

 Ethereality of Nostalgia

Unshorn sheep are nibbling ever so
nonchalantly on -- looks like --
marshmallows in the cornflower-blue
meadows of the sky on this overheated
summer's day. Their earthly counterparts
can be seen companionably emulating
them in bucolic pastures, alongside
highways off the green-forested byways
as vehicles hurtle their occupants to
destinations where nature and her
creations are seldom thought of
other than as an appealing backdrops
to a computer screen by those nostalgic
for a time since past, oblivious that it
remains, indelibly in the present tense.

With Malice Toward None

With Malice Toward None

Life happens. A joyous occasion,
generally. Death also happens, an
occasion far less celebrated. Life and
death enjoy a sealed pact, an agreement 
in principle and in fact, a covenant of
universal proportions and stark
inevitability. They are obedient servants
of nature. And nature herself is obedient
to her very own fascinated dedication to 
the eternality of timely repetition. This is 
her fundamental formula. She has
conscripted biology to allow her
organisms to beget and to take pleasure
in so doing. She has relieved them from
giving aid to the Angel of Death for they
view that creature with morbid dread.
She has invested her organisms in an
indomitable will to survive; begetting is 
a tool, defying the finality of death. It
does offend her when her plans go awry. 
Who better, after all, to entrust an
infant's tender care on occasion to,
other than the maternal grandmother?
Now herself destined to represent one
of those grating anomalies; death of the
spirit while the corporeal essence survives.
An emotional turmoil resulting from a
momentary lapse in informed judgement
when the presence of the infant is
forgotten, alone in a vehicle, on a day
miserably tumescent with summer heat.

The maternal grandmother of a toddler who 
died from heat exposure after being left alone 
inside a car last week has been criminally 
charged with her grandson's death.

The Changing Times

The Changing Times

Streets, like people, have a character
of their own. True, it is the people on
the street that give it's unique character.
Some streets in neighbourhoods are
like a house with many rooms, each
a private space where someone may
find solitude, and when the spirit
moves to communion, that someone
can simply exit-and-enter the street,
the living room of the 'house'. There to
tarry with neighbours familiar from
decades of shared exposure and social
congress. They empathize and sympathize,
congratulate, celebrate, and fondly linger.
An extended, familiar-type comfort
a valued element of life. Years pass and
familiarity sees children grown, and
homes at loose ends. Solved by moving
on. And suddenly the aura is disrupted,
unfamiliar faces too busy and disinterested
to hail the presence of a neighbour begin
to dominate the changing times and
the familiar surrenders to alienation.

Coming of Age

Coming of Age

One must not judge, even
on the evidence. All cultures
cultivate the best interests of those
they serve and thus are beyond
criticism since, after all, who are
the privileged to complacently
cluck disapproval of customs
arising through the heritage of
others deciding how best their
national social covenants will
suit them? Take the position of
young girls coming of age in an
advanced economy where a mother
can smother her daughter's
objections to place her behind
the wheel of the family vehicle 
and order compliance with rules
of the road, highway safety and
good driving skills. As opposed,
perhaps, to forcibly holding still
a fearfully recalcitrant daughter
by mother and grandmother, while
a skilled village elder traditionally
butchers the child's labia, preparing
her for respect in her community,
as a newly marriageable commodity
who will bear the future with pride
and pain, in equally assured measure.

Ancestral Recall

Ancestral Recall

Working the garden, the
moist soil warmed by the sun
-- its winter mulch of
kitchen compost sends up
the aroma of seasonal
promise. From its depths
the humid richness has bred
all the unseen creatures that
thrive in a micro-world all
their own. Above ground a
treasury of botany thrusts
and thrives, rewarding the
sensual needs of the gardener
wholly invested in the conceit
that it is their planning and
countless hours of
manipulating resources
lifted from nature that gives
reason to jubilantly claim
mastery over the soil and
its creatures, to create the
stunning natural display of
sublimely natural landscape.

Choices

Choices

It was not meant to be like this, to fail, 
to end in this manner. But it was destined 
to. Misjudged, quite obviously so. How 
was she to know his pathology of social
estrangement that merely seemed a 
minor aversion to overt, unearned perhaps 
presumed and impudent confidence 
in a personal context offended him? 
She admired the restraint of his personality, 
for she was, after all, too casual,  too 
anxious to be friendly to everyone. Intimacy
with her alone on his part seemed flattering. 
She chafed over the years at the uneven 
sentiments of their emotional bond, but 
obeyed his edicts, issued after all with her 
best interests uppermost in mind. The 
established routine of constraints upon 
her freedoms seemed a small sacrifice 
for the security of the marital covenant. 
And then of course there were the
children to be considered. And she did. No 
relaxation of the unchallenged roles he 
imposed. They grew, multiplied in numbers, 
urgency and depth. Now retired, he sits idle 
like a medieval potentate, glowering, 
pronouncing, issuing dicta. She ponders 
the fragment of dignity left to her shredded 
humanity through the exercise of free will.