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.

Settling In

Cold, damp and ghastly grey,
the fog has made itself
comfortable for two days of
utter opacity settling over farms
and forests, towns, villages and
the city where night-time lights
pierce the noon-day's unsettling
gloom. Vehicles pass silently on
darkly-glazed highways whose
grassy medians begin to welcome
the frigid atmosphere transitioning
to sleet and snow, casting a brief
illuminating effect as light
standards bounce briefly bright
off the freshly flickering flakes.
Tiny stars briefly flaring then
dying an extinguished life in
this dank local micro-universe.
The burnt-charcoal clouds billowing
above and beyond admitting to no
escape when nature suddenly urges
an upper gale to nudge them aside
and the sun appears, a wan disk
searching release to scorch the fog
rising from the river beyond into
reluctant exile. And for one short
miraculous moment that splendid 
orb of gold gains traction and beams
its glory as darkness flees and a
flaming path of light paves its way
across the river. Gone as swiftly
as it appeared, the fog ferociously
returns to once again dominate
the winter-in-motion arras.

Evolving Tradition

Can it be so readily possible
to create the small drama of a culture
of dependent response on wild 
creatures that a tradition can ensue,
passed on and inherited through
some arcane osmosis of memory?
A wide forested area teeming
with birds and small furry animals
alert to the daily arrival of an
elderly couple dispensing and 
caching peanuts has developed a
woodland celebrity status, a 
devout following of creatures
clamouring for attention with
direct dispensing of edible treats,
and who are they, in response,
not to accede and bask in the
satisfaction achieved in contact
and exchange of pleasantries with
an alien planetary species not 
entirely unlike their very own?

Comprehending Nature

A nature lover, the bicycle paths
running through the woods of a
popular family hiking area
represented her joyously preferred
route to expressing her pleasure
in nature and being comfortably
within nature's precincts. She
assumed the smiling stranger
asking directions was someone
whose values and sensibilities
reflected her own. But they were
opposites. She, light-boned, blond 
and femininely eager to please,
and he, bulky and darkly hirsute,
nursed a deadly pathology of hatred
and a destructive penchant for 
committing vile acts of psychopathy.
A very short time after giving
her eager directions to the stranger
her sightless blue eyes remained
open to the green woods surrounding
the creek in which her rigid body
lay, her brain no longer alert and
happily comprehending nature.

The Dripping Fog

A moody day, a big sulk.
Incessant, creeping rain,
the droplets slightly shy of
light, yet constant and sneakily
penetrating laying down a slick
dark shine on every surface
and all living things.
Not a pretty day by 
any means; dripplingly mean.
And the thing of it is
we groped about in the dark
to reach that conclusion, at
morning, midday and dusk;
a dense, pervasive fog greyed
the atmosphere, a perfectly
unsplendid creation of nature's
typically unmeasured devising.

Overdue

Finally, and at long last
it comes to me, it has fully
penetrated my reluctant
consciousness that there is
nothing, no thing whatever
that it is possible, even 
plausible I might conceivably
do, to placate the demons
that maliciously inhabit the
skull of your unconscious
cranium. They have always
nestled there, when you were
young and small, so too were
they, yet puzzlingly evident and
I, in my hopeful innocence
looked toward the future when
they would vanish as your mind
matured and discarded their
discordant presence. It has taken
a half-century for the demons
to mature to absolute authority
and form to fully realize I fed
their appetite for fear and 
appeasement, nurturing their
triumph and producing the
product that is now you, 
fully formed, trampling my psyche,
raging, indefatigably spiteful.

DEUS MISERATUR

Unwilling to accept responsibility
for his own actions, man's first
collective decision was to create
the Creator. In that Supreme Being
would rest the authority to
affect us all; that Spirit would

move us to behave as we do. We
gratefully give ourselves up to
His protection, His mercy; ourselves
giving no quarter, showing no mercy
to those who deny His existence.

Time has changed our perceptions,
for once a whole pantheon of Gods
saw to our needs; gave way to an
Aten, finally a Jehovah, heir of El.
Man is adaptable, and with his

changing imperatives he recognizes
the need to alter allegiance to
a new supremacy. In this era the
computer is the latest manifestation
of Divine Presence and the seat

of bureaucracy its temples.
Number after number is sacrificed to
appease the God whose fodder we are.
Recognizing safety in anonymity, we
embrace the liturgy of ciphers,


and comforted, we exist blindly,
in a uniform dance of submission.

 

The Leader, The Led

It's a chill ill wind that batters
the defences of man and beast
alike on this bleakly miserable
winter day with its icy gales.
The man is large and looks robust,
though he is also elderly and walks
slowly, with cane firmly held.
His little companion a mere
notional mote of a dog,
whose slender legs and delicate feet
convey it swiftly over the frozen
ground. An ear-muffed cap and
rough jacket ensures icy fingers of
wind do not penetrate the man's
defences. As for the tiny dog,
bristling with bridled energy it is
constantly on the alert for challenges
to its guard duty in protection of its
companion, hackles rising at the
appearance of others walking
the forest trail and answering to 
the impudence of squirrels by the
need to uphold its terrier-breed 
honour, ferociously running them
up the safety of tree trunks,
generating the warmth of duty bound.

 

Augering Ill

This lady is not for trifling; there,
she's at it again, the unabashed
eternal, infernal tease, as though
she's an impudent imp and not
merely the most indisputably
powerful force in existence. A
chimera of kindly indulgence and
dark malevolence, she casts her
moods upon the winds as
instantly changeable as the
chameleon she designed
inspired by her own ineffably vast
persona. In permutations of
raging might and indifferent
beneficence she rules, a mighty,
universal force, majestic and
unopposed. Close up and personal
we are tantalized by sun streaming
through early morning windows,
then a wicked wind tears the
pod of sailboats from the sky,
entrenching an armada of black,
glowering galleons all cannons on
deck outfitted for war, and we realize
she's gone into one of her mood-polarized
regal tantrums. Intimately beneficent
or remotely baneful, no region of the
great vastness of the Universe immune.

Spiritual Revenance

Angelic hierarchy
flutter my adoring mind
transfix my soul
with melody of the spheres
that grand celestial psalmody.

Zodiacal Intermediaries!
Messengers of Light!
Succouring Avengers!
Ministering Flames!

Through sightless orbs
materializes a melange
of lesser lights
Cherubs, Seraphim
guarding G-d's only throne
ascend gently to

Angels, Archangels
biblic Michael, Gabriel, Raphael
(as for Metatron he
   lurks unbecomingly
   behind seventy names)
terrifically awe-ful
manifestly inspiring all

permutations of brilliant majesty
The Heavenly Host.
(Never speak of
   clattering harpies
   winging star-flecked time.)

Renascent deification
        plagiarizations
from misted fearful antiquity
Persia, Assyria, Babylonia
lost age of fabled Mesopotamia
lighting mortality's
frail landscapes.

Support my wasted clay
oh vibrant lozenges
you golden-halowed faultless
     brazen-imaged
myriad-eyed pretenders.

Where are you
when my pious tongue
worships your
Forbidden Name?

 

Favoured Pets

The mere happenstance sight of a
small dog in unexpected places
accompanying its people
accustomed to deferring to the
little beast's disinclination not
to be included in all and varied
destinations, arrests attention
unleashing a gust of memory
fond appreciation and regret
with their own experience;
joy in companionship and
grievous loss. Their tenderly
brief fondness for the small
creature a lesson in emotional
irrationality augmented by a
deeply held anguish over an
inevitability common to us all,
acknowledged by the sensitive,
ignored by the oblivious.
Companion animals teach us 
much about requited love not
species-specific-dependent.

A Mother's Burden

In brief, it is not always a
daughter resolving never to live
the deprived and unfortunate life
of her mother, unkindly dealt with
by furtive fortune, for there are
no such monopolies; results are as
multifarious as peoples' idiosyncratic
reactions to which fork of the road
they will select on life's journey.

Sometimes a mother looks back
in sorrow to recapture memory
wondering when it was her daughter's
journey from carefree to careworn
occurred, a transition she had never
herself experienced but thought
she had armed her child against;
guiding, exposing, pleading.

To no avail. We each make, then own
our very own intimate history.

 

Autumn Day

At the mountain stream, still tumbling
vigorously down the rock-strewn
slope, roiling thunder fills the air though
the level of water spuming and spilling
is diminished from its spring-time high.
There is colour left yet in copper
beech leaves and yellow birch foliage
on this late fall day. Dogwood leaves,
patterned delicately in gold, pink and
scarlet and hemlock, spruce and pine
gleamingly assertively green among
the bare deciduous forest offerings.
The sky a blue sea, upon which no
clouds sail, bright rays penetrate
deep into the forest, deeper now than
possible with green canopy intact.
The tangy aroma of crisp leaf-mounds
envelopes the nature-lovers. A sudden
wind unhinges from branches overhead
remaining leaves, cascading them in
gay abandon festooning hikers' hair
as though they have suddenly somehow
dissolved into the greater landscape,
another point of arcane interest. A
conceit soon abandoned forging on 
through the depleted forest; irradiated 
glimmers of sun reaching areas
never before possible, awakening
insects preparing for winter, within the
vast reservoir of nature's unselfconscious
dedication to life's ineffable elements.

Rest Now, Katie

She was small, an adorable, lovable
little animal. She no longer is, though.
She departed the scenery of life
a scant forty minutes ago, stiff, cold.
She was unwilling to die. Though old
and ill, she fought gallantly to live.
Reaching the point where she was
no longer able to do more than lift
her furry little head, she began to
ravenously eat her food, contrasting
with her wan refusal to eat just a
few days earlier. Cold and stiff, she
hardly resembles the Katie known
and loved. Sad and weightless she is now.
Absent the sweet weight of the soul
that lifted itself beyond the shoals of
life and into the shores of memory.
Just a rabbit, a bunny in the parlance
of those who loved her. Good thing that
animals don't suffer, just as well
as an animal she was absent a personality
otherwise grief would be even more
profound. The anguish now suffered by
those who loved her results from believing
she could feel, and care, and was gifted
with intelligence that her character
revealed. One of Earth's smallest and most
gentle of creatures, Katie is gone.
The brain that made her what she was in
personality and the robust heart that
gave back trust and love, and at the end
refused to stop beating, finally surrendered

to the inevitable. Rest, Katie, in peace.

Handle With Caution

Encountered, this very day,
a familiar old acquaintance
admired widely for its handsome
presence, esteemed since
presence equals leisure-sport
activities -- and feared wit
a profound respect for the 
manner in which an
entire arras, urban and rural
becomes transformed.
Creeping into the darkened
landscape on countless silent
flakes of snow, winter arrives,
transfixing us with the 
regal beauty of its ermine
white majesty gleaming in
the moonlight, beckoning children
to play and adults to cavort on
skis and snowboards while
motorists exert highway caution
in whiteouts and home thermostats
are turned up to baffle the winds
roaming icily through crevices and
fireplaces leap their warming flames
to counter the frigid atmosphere.

At the National Cenotaph

It is a mean, miserably
inclement day to remain
at proud attention outdoors
before the national memorial.
Nature lashing the grieving
respectful in a blizzard of snow
propelled by a wicked wind.
As though even she,
particularly the creator of all,
feels herself aggrieved by
how her creatures foul one
another and perhaps even 
her expectations; that we
clever, yet obviously dim and
oblivious creatures are incapable
of harnessing the bitter wind
we harbour within, to extend
instead to one another patience
and acceptance so there
would be no need of such
grievous ceremonies
honouring the sacrifice of
the fallen and the courage of
the weeping old warriors.

 

Let Loose!

Like a bird, euphoric over its 
release from a freedom-stifling cage,
her small voice lilts with pleasure, 
twittering her happiness in a flight of
rhapsodic language leaving the listener 
in awe of a boisterous inner world
released within her elderly mind. She 
chirrups cheerful advice and shrewd
observations, shaking the wisdom
from her grizzled head, grey locks tumbling
about the sharpened, bony features of 
her face. The staff at the Goodwill Thrift
shop sigh, exasperated at her entrance, 
then busy themselves arranging early 
Christmas wares on the shabby shelves. 
Her bright beady eyes glint their interest, 
as her hands, like possessive claws, lift
and examine bright objects, delightedly 
placing them into passing shoppers' carts,
informing their puzzled reactions it's 
time to liberate themselves from their
stifling lives and live a little, following 
her own vividly evanescent example.

Winter Beech: Still Life

A beech
standing in the frozen stillness
of the snowbound wood;
still wearing autumn's
translucent leaves
    rasping in the wind.
Frail covering
in this chill landscape.

 

We Walk The Ancient Ground

Gulls swoop over blue water
shrilling at the cresting
rapids in the Ottawa River
and we stand before 
the memorial
the rusted figure 
of Father Brebeuf
crucifix in one hand
paddle resting on a canoe
in the other.
                   We travel an
Indian walkway, that place
where centuries past
portaging traders, missionaries
were brought by their guides
to skirt the rapids.
                    We walk
the ancient ground, the
granite of the Canadian shield
where sumacs, elms and
spindly poplar replace the
forest giants that once
furred this land.
                      Here,
sinkholes in the granite
and there, water laps
stone steps that Brule
and Champlain once climbed.

Across the river, Ottawa's bulks
and Gothic traceries of the
Parliament Buildings, but here,
eyes downcast and breathing creosote,
we follow the adventurers.

Blackbirds jaw their call
swallows arabesque the river
and bush grows close to the path
to shut off the present; the
rapids rush, playing us
the song their paddles heard.

On Meeting

Well    it's true
I know you
your insides
speak to me
through words
       uncareful
and trusting
yet   it is only through
these words
exulting hallelujah!
I've found you
that I see you.

          Is
that really you
is that who you are
sitting there
calmly dissecting ideas
becoming engorged on fact
face   a stranger's?

Is that familiar mind
hiding behind that
sphinx-like head
those pale grey eyes
       careful now
unlike the exuberance
of your written word?

          TELL me
what does that strange
smile mean? and what
does the calmness of those eyes envisage?
Can you see me
here behind this face?
Do my eyes refuse
to reflect
familiar words?

Heavenly Pastures

An Authority Presence
of many skills
the Spirit moves to the
calculus of pitting
animal husbandry to
test an experimental
theory long brooded upon
to whose purpose that 
Heavenly Shepherd
has loosed biddable flocks
of grazing sheep to
wander the blue meadows
of the vault above,
meandering purposefully
to nibble hither and yon
depriving their massed
pasturage of intent to
shower their content
on the Earth below.

Image: David A. Aguilar/CFA -- Concept drawing of newly discovered planets Kepler-62e and 62f

Superabundant Life!

In numbers incomprehensible
for the human mind, that
mysterious triumph of Nature's
meticulous architecture to digest
much less comprehend,
astronomers have now concluded
based on data sent from the
vastness of our near corner
of the Universe by the discerning
eye of the Kepler telescope
that 8.8-billion (!) stars revolve
in Earth's Milky Way Galaxy
alone, a mere fragment of the
infinite, unknowable Universe.
Evolved and spinning within
the irresistibility of those
countless stars' magnetic
draw, unrealized numbers of
rocky planets causing cosmologists
to ponder the odds of Nature's
building blocks of life and whether
her blueprint does not extend
those odds to infinity. If so,
they puzzle, where are those
other creature-aliens and why
have they not, in a spirit of
common cause and civil politeness
come calling? Might Earthlings'
reputation for disputation and
wild emotions outrunning reason
conceivably have preceded us
into the timeless, distant ether?