Where Are They Now?
We recall how much we were
accustomed to their presence
as nothing out of the ordinary,
so accustomed were we to seeing
them, hearing them, every day,
everywhere. Then it suddenly
occurs to us: where have they
all gone, those flighty birds?
Those bright blue, bell-toned
birds so common in our childhood,
no longer to be seen. On occasion,
in early spring as we meander
through the woods we hear the
shrill yet ghostlike song and we think:
ah, a Bluejay ... but there is now to
our ears, a mournful quality, as though
the bird, like us, laments its once
plentiful presence in our lives.
Those cheeky little scrappers
once seen everywhere, at all times,
scrabbling under trees, on
pavement, under cars, searching
out seed and grit, their familiar
chirp speaking to us: when did all
those lovable little house sparrows
leave, and what's more, why?
The trilling flocks of Evening
grosbeaks that once regularly
invaded our gardens, sitting like
ripe yellow fruits on branches, and
their cousins, the rose-breasted beauties,
why did they forsake us, we now
wonder, marvelling in sad regret
at their mysterious absence.
And then perhaps the answer comes,
we have it in those sadly sordid
instances falling upon the maimed
remnants of a wild rabbit, a dove,
a tiny grey mouse, a red squirrel, its
once glossy pelt drab in death. And
we see the stealthy departing flash
of neighbouring predator felines.
The Only Child
Born an only child of a marriage
that did not last she was torn
between loyalty to father or mother
her emotions and love stretched
between the two insulated from
one another through hostility and
geography, and she exhausted
from their pitiless scorn demanding
her decision, one or the other.
Her unwavering devotion to both
mandated distance from both.
In her middle age, regretting of
the bleak reality she had failed to
forge a shared life of her own,
alone, lonely, she returned to help
usher her mother, then her father
through illness toward gentle death.
She contemplates her image now,
resembling them both and with
her passion for belonging and
longings long spent, still now,
as she was then, a lone child. Now
she dreams of what she never
had, but still somehow, lost.
In an age of emotional distance
and casual social commitment the
epiphany of an absorbing, healing
intimacy of loving relationship
never materialized so could never
be consummated. Her life instead
consumed by dedication to work
and to never-ending studies she
enrols in academic art appreciation.
Seared In Memory
Her voice numb with glum
resentment makes me cringe in
sympathy searching within that
cavern of youthful misery some sign
her usual cheerfulness has not entirely
forsaken her. Grim with procrastinating
conscience and the awful telescoping
of allotted time, she utters her
despairing phrases of condemnation:
teachers, subject, curricula, exam,
and oh yes, dread. I remind her when
she wails what a waste the entire
exercise of learning by rote seems to
her, of how well she trained her
memory back in grade school, to
faultlessly recite her favourite
Robert Louis Stevenson poem, and
finally, a rueful laugh. And the admission
that she now recalls every word,
scored faultlessly into her memory bank
proving, I tell her, that nothing is
gained but by effort, and no knowledge
is ever a waste. Another laugh in
recall of that performance so long
ago when recall failed beyond the
first two stanzas and she remained
there, frozen in mortification, and it is
that which was seared into memory.
Introduction, Exit
Infants, with their dewy skin
and deliciously malleable and soft
extremities, their wisps of silken hair
and dreamily appealing faces capture
hearts, to be coddled and cuddled,
their safety and well-being secured
from harm, their eyes to focus,
their minds beginning to glimmer
reason, their future a challenge to
anxious parents, adoring grandparents
bewitched and bedazzled by the
impish mischief and bland innocence.
Soon enough, the advanced
generation evinces failures of the
senses in lock-step with the growing
acute awareness of the succeeding
generation. Eyes and ears become
deranged and unreliable, memory
balks and ease of movement
impaired within the wizened carcase
of the once-robust. The never-ending
story of the living organism's
birth, awareness, facility, collapse.
Eulogy
It was said of them that they had lived
full lives and surely they had, seamlessly
but inevitably making their way to the apex.
From that which is, to an infinite nothing,
their names preserved for local posterity
in the parish records. They were vastly
advanced in age, frail yet loving life.
Among them the blind and the demented,
their vital tools of life's enjoyment walkers
and wheelchairs. In the village their sons
and daughters most grateful for the saving
presence of the residence, where one attendant
would be present in night-time service to
fifty deaf, blind and halt residents. Accidents
do happen to spur the inevitable and after all,
70, 80, 90, 100 years of life is a generous
experience those attending the memorial service
for the thirty expired, sigh. Life happens, the
placid dignity of a three-story wood structure
sheltering the frail from inconvenience,
exertion and familial strife in a busy world
truly a blessing. Life leads to death, the fire
engulfing those unable to help themselves,
vaulted within their place of winter ice
generously sprayed into existence by doughty
firefighters. The flames that consumed wood
and flesh alike bizzarely flickering hungrily still,
within the icy scaffold of death's dungeon.
Come On By!
We don't stand on an
etiquette of stiff formality
at our home. They all know
there is an open invitation
to visit whenever the urge
occurs, just drop by, we're
always pleased to see you.
The invitation comes complete
with pick-me-up-and-nibble
refreshments and they never
know who else they may see
and then, of course, as it
happens, nor do we.
The Malevolent Wind
Wind is a wretched companion
on blisteringly cold winter
landscapes, its fierce insistence
penetrating all of nature's devices
to give shelter to the vulnerable,
a veritable demonstration of the
inventor's creation assuming an
entitlement all its own. Sending
probing daggers of frigid misery
in a raptor's penetration of fur and
feathers, tree bark and down-filled
jackets alike, those afflicted in the
misery of the wind's ill humour
on damply-ferocious landscapes
of thickly falling snow exert all
energy to survive the deadly
combination whose exposure will
leave in its wake a spirit wisping
from frozen remains while the
wind whips itself into a frenzy,
spinning a spiralling spindrift
illustrative of a demon's delight.
Linked In
Her unaffected chirpy greeting
and effusive welcome to each new
customer moving their shopping
cart to her checkout counter, an
exercise in blatant cheerfulness
grating doubtless to curmudgeonly
sensibilities has shoppers lift their
heads as though to view some exotic
bird, to see before them the sweet
face of a young woman, wide smile
wreathing her genuine features of
soft kindliness. No, she never tires
of offering these greetings, for,
she admits, though knowing how
much others detest this job, she
views it as an opportunity to
meet people and lighten the burden
of their days despite the few who
glower truculently in response. That
is their way, not hers. Good nature
costs little she says, broadening
her smile, taking no effort, making
her own day worthwhile, leading to
pleasant little chats, she says, like ours.
Surviving Winter
A living jewel descends
on scarlet wings to
perch on the bare branches
of a tree whose fruit
was once as brilliant as
those of the cardinal,
feathers fluffed upon the
sleekly plump form, a
black streak over its red
beak, preparing its
cautious strike in retrieval
of a nut to energize its
inner warmth generated
as aid to survive the brutal
chill of a wicked winter.
Corvus brachyrhynchos
No one can be oblivious to its presence
for this is a large bird, tending to
represent as a very social creature
often needful of the presence of its
clan, and ofttimes a 'murder of crows'
in its overwhelming numbers and
crackling expression turns heads,
inspiring in some fear and revulsion.
It has a tendency to aggression in the
presence of owls, but yet small birds
impassioned by their rejection of
predator prowling among their young
are known to pursue and threaten its well
being. It sits on trees in the forest or
roofs and light standards in urban settings
hunched and brooding, a sinister,
malevolent figure, claim those
ignorant of its keen intelligence,
memory and ability to recall the
characteristics, physical and behavioural
of those who abuse it, even to
disseminating that information to
others of its species. It is possible to
engage and establish amicable relations
with the crow; it will know, as it does for
me, where I live, following the path
I take in the forest, distributing wildlife
delicacies of which it too is fond. And
when I see it of a morning on my porch,
nonchalantly extracting nuts from their
pods I know which of us creatures nature
has best equipped to endure her histrionics.
A Sheltering Home
It's perfectly true, there are
brutally miserable winter days
which more than qualify as fit
for neither man nor beast, when
animals in nature's precincts
exercise the inherited memory
of their ancestors to leave
exposure to the wildly undaunted,
themselves investing in the
primordial instinct of
self-preservation through
hibernation. During these
icily nasty days when nature
flagrantly indulges in abandoned
malice, we too take notice
as creatures of elevated
cerebral function, to surrender
defiance of the elements to the
common sense solution of
sheltering frail bodies within
hermetic heated havens.
The Generational Bond
Sixty years of living, learning
and reading separate them,
grandmother and granddaughter.
Same family resemblance can be noted,
but the 17-year-old is tall, full-bodied,
confident and cool. Her grandmother
possesses none of these attributes
and never did. Each day they share a
conversation, old habits difficult to
sunder, as they exchange opinions
and update one another. University
is on the near horizon, where the
grandmother never was a contender.
Love and advice bind them, the
younger seeking, the elder giving.
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| Washington City Paper |
The Silent, Icy Void
The British Empire conquered
all they aspired to, for the British
appetite to surmount all challenges
was unquenchable. Domination of
conquest in all spheres of endeavour
emphasizing indomitable fitness, vigour,
the guiding star of British superiority
impelled its champions through conflicts
and trade imperatives from India to
Persia, Afghanistan to Pakistan's
Waziristan and Lhasa in Tibet. By
force of imperial arms to diplomacy
with China and challenges to Russia,
on to exploration of the unknown at
Earth's two poles, Arctic and Antarctic,
the sceptered Isle ruled the world. Of
more recent vintage than the Great War
to end all wars, sturdy assaults on the
Himalaya. Stiff-lipped expeditions
to Chomolangma over the moving
glaciers of a world of ice and snow
encasing lofty granite exhaled its
siren's call from the blizzard-blasted
roof of the world. Adventurers, surveyors,
naturalists, explorers, mountaineers,
summitteers all, bewitched by the vast
and lofty aspect of the veiled goddess.
Awed by her imperious, impervious
presence, and her redoubtable entourage
of sleet and wind, sun and icy mists,
they were compelled to risk their lives
to court her in their lust of conquest.
Her magnificent, unknowable
features shielded in the challenge
of depthless snow-mantled aloofness
led them on to reckless folly. She remains
in her sentinel fastness timelessly
awe-inspiring and they, Mallory and
Irvine, ninety years haunting her slopes.
Snowstorm
The snow squall is adamant,
suffocating the atmosphere
in hysterically flocking
clumps of falling snow,
defiant of the equally
insistent efforts of the
indignant sun to make
way for its imperial majesty.
Over the broad expanse of
the ice-shielded river
snow gently plushes the
river's ice-bound prison.
The triumph of the blizzard's
properties is its wizardly
act, a spontaneous and
amazing exhibition of
magic, no less. Faintly etched
then gone, the urban forest,
vast river, roads and traffic,
high- and low-rise buildings,
disappeared in an impressively
massive white-out of all
the eye can discern.
The Master Class
Nature's atelier has no peer
for its inspiring facility in
surpassing success, producing
an artistic authenticity among
hordes of admirers aspiring to
emulate her perfect and complex
creations of surpassing beauty.
She paints her landscapes in
seasonal motifs of dreamily
fresh pastels, vibrantly rendered
dramas of visionary delights;
in delicate or robust hues and
ofttimes stark contracts of
dark and light, trifling with
our emotions, exciting our
admiration, leading us to ecstasy
and the pleasures of unremitting
dabbling to reflect her mastery
in the pure elegance of landscape
presentation. In summer, fields
of wildflowers and attendant bees,
in fall the incessant tumbling of
brilliant foliage, in winter the
exquisite tracery of snow over
forests, in spring awakening
colours of renewal, her design
repeats into timeless infinity.
Prevailing Wind
The sound hums and thrums like
an atmospheric highway crowded
with desperate traffic but the traffic
in this winter forest is that of
dessicated fall foliage pried loose
from their stubborn perch on branches
of oak, beech and hornbeam unwilling
to part with their pale and withered
leaves, opposing the insistent wind.
The argument is won by neither,
the trees retaining what the wind,
despite ferocious determination,
cannot dislodge. From the dark canopy
of the denuded forest, tree trunks
the wind shakes and rattles against
one another as it roars its rage of
supreme domination chorus their
agony. The incessant mounting and
alternately diminishing clatter and fury
embraces the forest. High above, a
flock of crook-winged gulls ride the
wind currents, gliding and flapping
with scarce effort, to disappear into
a sky whose clouds have been
shattered by prevailing winds.
Ah, The Sun!
All a radiant sun's facets are revealed
on this pleasantly crisp winter day
as it burns brightly within the ocean-blue
canvass of the sky. Peering through the
forest canopy, past the gaunt, dark trunks and
boughs of naked trees, it rests its rays to
scintillate on every needle of the woodland's
pines, hemlock, firs and spruce, the
evergreens welcoming the comfort of even
the illusion of warmth in an otherwise
wanly-lit landscape. The forest stream,
freed of the ice that held it captured has
rediscovered motion, the sun illuminating
and sparking on its every movement.
The snow layered deep on the forest floor,
shines its icy lacquered top under the
urging of the sun obliquely slanting its
thaw-and-freeze surface. Wildlife pause
to reconsider their altered habitat under the
beaming influence of the disk. A flock of
crows gather silently in a concentration
of flight toward the golden orb.
January Thaw
The sun is a wan, fuzzy disk
struggling its way past the
billowing dull clouds, a struggle
the clouds take full possession of,
drowning the sun in a bath of grey.
No matter, the atmosphere has
relented to a brief warming trend
and the snow-laden hills have
succumbed, flushing their meltwater
into the wooded ravine's recently
ice-freed stream. The water cold
and furiously rushing downstream,
carries with it detritus released
by overhanging trees relinquishing
dark twisted twigs, ice-shattered
bark, dead leaves and pieces of
old bird and animal nests; the
bondage of winter in release
a temporary window of relief.
On Another World
Imagine, if you can, people so
brimming with ingratitude for
the privilege of life on Planet Earth
that they yearn to experience life
on a planet where none exists,
leaving their natural environment
surfeit with treasures to enhance life
for one with a bleak prospect, desolate
beyond words, to become dependent
on the hope that human ingenuity
will provide oxygen, water, food,
and of course communication with
those whose preference is to remain
in situ, spurning the opportunity to
traverse dark, cold, timeless space,
an opportunity that sends chills of
the unknown and the potential for
the vision of a hospitable Mars to
collapse, with none surviving, an
optimistic query into the mysteries
of the Universe failed as a goal
simply unachievable through the
puny efforts of self-assured
exploration marketers to the beyond.
In Nature's House
While it was once, in the mists
of time long gone their habitat
too, they had chosen to surrender
the ineffability of free will
and perilous autonomy to the
assumed security of a predestined
social-animal link impressed
upon them by a higher order
of hubristic entitlements eager
to exploit their feral resources
and manipulate them to their
own purpose. Those surroundings
once so natural to them, now
appeal as temporary playgrounds
for they are nurtured elsewhere
their survival imperative no
matter of pride in self-sufficiency
lost, but a casual practical
fait accompli distant ancestors
succumbed to. Leaving their wild
cousins to view them as pitiful
appendages of inferior creatures.
The Father The Son
They lean muscle and sinew
into their work
minds free to wander
tongues hanging silent
in the roofs of their mouths.
Companions they find comfort
in close presence
each teacher to the other
wordlessly
carefully
full of care for the moment.
They are masters of the mind
but yet lovers of hand's efforts
they dexterously play ideas
one on the other
casually
cut wood to fit delineated form
sand and smooth
shave and stain
two jacks of variable trades.
Arras
A field of snow
growing
in the silence.
Sun softening
the gentle swells
illuminating
crystals.
Wind bends
a long straw
and winds it slowly
ornamenting the
pristine blanket,
with an oval
repeated
and repeated.
A mouse shelters
in a snowhole
nibbling windfallen seeds;
leaving droppings
in the frozen nest.
Hare tracks
cluster under
shelter of a
snow-laden pine.
There - the
outspread wings
of a falcon
imprinted on the snow
- and there the
hare tracks end.
There is no blood
to colour the
monomorphic plane.
Early Harvest, 1980
Winter's Icy Slumber
The frozen woods stand still
and moodily hushed in the
lee of a diminishing day. A
hazy white half-moon shares
a cloudless pewter sky with a
golden blazing sun incapable
of penetrating the cold
clamped over the landscape
below. Bare tree trunks stand
stark and dark against the
white damask clothing the
forest. Though wan, sun
rays slant their way past the
bare canopy to illuminate
without warmth, the static
scene of winter's icy slumber.
Nature's Challenge
They are nature's maledictions
upon all things living and
vulnerable to the miseries
brought by seasonal climatic
pressures. The collaboration
between Arctic chill and
bitterly blasting icy winds
send the unmistakable message
of nature's supreme domination
over all that presumes to exist,
albeit by her very own clever
design. She stages these
intermittent events to challenge
a pervasive arrogance among her
less docile creatures presumptuous
in their misapprehension of belief
that they are entitled to the
blissful assurance of existence.
