The Last of Her Line

The last of her line of warrior queens
Penthesilea spurred the flagging Trojans
to combat with brave words and Priam had
faith until the oracle showed him her
limp form on a funeral pyre.

But the fleeting glory of the Amazon
inspired the armies of Troy, dispirited
by nine years of encirclement, by Hector's
death and they followed her wild mare to

the battlefield and fought as they never
had before, lancing and axing the Greeks,
driving them back to the beached ships
with newfound fury, their wild warcries

crowning the seagulls' wails. Blood
gored the plains of Ilium and heads rolled
like stones on the breach of Achaean
      offence
until Achilles, still mourning Patroclus

joined the battle to confront the warrior
woman. The air thundered with battle
the cries of the dying, the speared, the
gutted. Facing each other, the half god

the Amazon each scented victory. Ah,
Penthesilea's spear glanced off dread
Achilles' shield, his greave and in his
turn Chiron's pupil pierced the warrior

woman through her breast, penetrating
the horse to stick her body like meat
upon a spit. Plucking the helm from her
head, Achilles looked with rage on the

dead beauty of the woman whose courage
matched his and he lusted helplessly
for those slack limbs to entwine his
that dead mouth to catch his, that gone

breath to sweeten his life. There is
no victory in conquering
                  there is no glory!
he cried in anguish and tried to die.

The Silent Forest

It is exquisitely, perfectly still,
this landscape, like an utterly
captivating painting of a forest
deep, deep in winter slumber.
So quietly still there is no sound,
nothing moves, though this is a
living landscape. Ambient sound
of huddled wildlife stilled,
hushed by the lavish layers
of snow that storms have ladled
deep into the woods, luxuriating
in the plushy depths on the forest
floor, covering all surfaces, to
the narrow needles of pine,
spruce, fir and hemlock and the
frozen creekbed, stilled in ice.
Wait! a wisp of wind has unravelled
a diaphanous veil of snow from an
over-laden branch, in a lazy, gauzy
tumble below. Even the sun is
muted, its brilliance transformed
to a hazily dazzling diamond of
huge dimensions suspended in the 
silvery white cover of the sky,
an ephemeral vision of winter.

Our Peaceable Kingdom

A peaceable kingdom of nature's
modest creatures is a reality
where foragers randomly pass
by one another in their timeless
hunt for the foods that are species
specific, unattractive to their
competitors in the daily trials
of survival. Trials that must of
necessity include a healthy 
awareness of the stealthy and
deadly approach of predators feeding
down the raw and bloody food chain.
But on our porch, the winter
feeding station that attracts local
small furred creatures and birds
on the fly from the boreal forest
joining the locals, manners of civility
prevail, the squirrels take their
turn from the tiny red, the bushy
grey and the pedestrian black, while
chickadees and juncos flit nervously
to their share, the cardinals await
their turn and the rabbit appears when
all others have finally departed. 
Leaving we spectators at peace
with the admirable vision of the
accommodation of need and the
natural delicacy of sharing.

The Dearest Girl in Town

Thomas Arne
of Rule Britannia fame
born two hundred and seventy-five
years ago (Handel's coeval)
wrote an endearing piece

of an endearing piece
praising, yet lamenting
a state of affairs
where she whom
not only he loved

but they
and them
and all the others -
raised her fee
from half a crown
to half a guinea.

Till Death Do Us Part

It is not the prudence of economic
acumen that prompts certain
investments based on a far more
fundamental human need. That need 
to forge an essential emotional bond
of  companionship to last a lifetime,
long after the first urgencies of the
bedroom and the nursery, basic
to the first order of the survival code
we obey, but well beyond, to the
inner core of our being, to satisfy
that need of binary comfort and
security we name love. The unquenchable
devotion that exists between those who
have graced their lives as faithful
tender companions, returning trust 
with cherishing trust turns priceless
with maturing memories whose
sharing intimacy reflects that timeless
need fulfilled from youth to the
infinity of a lifetime, whose finale
blind fortune alone gracefully decides.

Come Spring

The forest sits in perplexed 
uncertainty between two opposing
forces, each with their coercive
elements of wind and moisture
atmospheric change and seasonal
drive to procreate driving instincts 
of the forest creatures. Early
arrival of migrants abandoning 
south for the changing north
readily assume their spring notes
of celebration. The warming sun
penetrates the leafless branches of
trees preparing their sap to rise
in welcome of spring. More clement
weather will persuade the snow
smothering the forest floor to melt
and run off to the waiting ice-freed
rivers of the land. Soon, white will
be transformed to fresh, glowing
green, and those shy spring flowers
will lift their heads in the ongoing
perpetuation of the rites of spring.

They're Back!

They've returned, those dark
brooding spawn of witches'
brew, their hooded eyes glaring
prepared to feed off forest
carrion, a murder of crows.

Representing to some the
very presence of arcane evil
incarnate the stuff of hideous
nightmare scenarios. On the
other  hand, to some they present
as precociously clever, adept
to opportunities, alert to the
ill will of those who detest
their presence; reciprocating
in their own inimitable way.

They are astute and yes, of
course opportunistic, recognizing
our presence and what it purports
sentries posted at known sites
to raise the alert when we
appear, and soon nearby trees
and the skies above host their
dark forms as they follow our
progress, swooping to retrieve
the deposits, their patient treat.

 

The Cardinal

Before breaking dawn, the night hours 
still hovering in their dark brooding clasp
withholding time to favour the freezing rain 
glazing the landscape in ice, the voice of the
cardinal arose, a pure bell-like trill not of
rebuke but of pure unalloyed joy, anticipating
light seeping through the gloom. That
glorious bird with its brilliant plumage
illuminates the landscape it occupies
with its ruby-fired presence and song,
defiant of despair. Enduring the elements
humiliating its beauty, glossy feathers
reduced to bedraggled drench, he lifts
his throat to call forth a silver horizon
and the drying warmth of the golden sun.

 

The Seasons Game

Look here, the referee has tapped
oblivious, cranky old Winter on
its stooped shoulder - time out for a
break. The result, an ill-humoured
shrug, but the calendar of the seasons
cannot be subject to the unaccommodating
temperament of one player intent on
tripping time and the elements in a
backward stumble where the future
dissolves into the past to absorb
the present in that season's grudging
departure. Winter, though, is a
season inured against analysis or
arguments of reason, and the old man
calls a conference to connive with
his team; wind, sleet, snow and ice,
to claim for themselves the prize of
constant dark, cold misery. Finally,
the struggle to surmount the inevitable
results in the referee ordering defiance
out of the field of contention, as she
disciplines her elements and dispatches
the winning team to exert themselves,
transforming winter's remnants to grace.

Thwarted

The sign read
'inexperienced climbers beware'
(arrow pointing to alternate)

The ascent precipitous
narrow path boulder strewn
criss-crossed with treeroots
helpfully gripping the soil
grudgingly assisting our climb.

At the cascades the
tumbling waters were a sight
yet fear of a misstep
and wildly winging heart
dulled the image to a
delirious troubled mirage.

A mile up the mountain
we could rest and
lave tired feet in the
crystal stream
                cold as death
            clear as a wish
       pure as my fear.

In retrospect I regret
my refusal to go on -
valuing as I did my
every limb - for the memory
of a peerless overview
and promise of more

at the summit pricks my
frailty
         goads your recall;
If I promise
                 same time
         same place
     next year?

Innocence

The universe; a child's sigh,
A loving touch; the child smiles.
A place to call one's own;
That child knows no better.

There will be a time,
There will come such a time,
There can be no mistaking
the symptoms. Neither time
nor man's antic manipulations
can deny its approach.

And then, I ask (I wonder,
don't you?) will there be
nothing left but the child's tears
that complacent smile of
the child who knew no better?

 

Snowshoeing

     No wind
but cold enough
to chill still cheeks
so we move off
over the snow
sky dense with stars
moon a quarter-light
trees limned
against the night.

       No sound
but our snowshoes
creaking the snow
lifting puffs
      with every
wide-legged step.

No perspective
but before us
an undisturbed sheet
     covers the 
hidden country
where we orient
our winter landscape.

No trouble
breaking trail
      before us
snow neat as a 
new-laid counterpane
behind us a path
     undulating
like some unknowable
nocturnal beast.

 

Enlightened Agedness

In the unavoidable circumstances we
name the passage of time we age, and
what was once so clear fades; we mature
and become a fainter image of what we
once were. Just as time and the elements
abrade and mellow mineral surfaces,
so too does it impact on the creatures
of the Earth, as the early passions of
life dim and recede. When my mother
of deadly lashing tongue and wicked 
elbows with whom daily life was a 
trial by fire reached near senescence,
calm and good humour, and no little
amount of gentle confusion overtook her,
so when an even older male companion
materialized, 90 to her 70, and fondness
bloomed, her children were amused,
startled, finally accepting. As though
her intimate affairs were ours to approve
of. Or not. Her grief at his passing
matched ours at hers. And now, myself
the age she was then, all makes sense.

 

Tabula Rasa

Something has set her off again
but then, she is congenitally restless
easily bored, given to dissatisfaction
with the status quo, the sameness of
things, always eager to embrace
change and freely exercise her
judgement to nip and tuck, effect
new alterations here and there. Then
there are those times when her
irritation is so piqued she chooses
to completely obliterate what
displeases her current tastes
and woe betide any who emerge in
innocence in her furious path. At 
the moment, and in this place, her
campaign has a more benevolent tenor 
than her usual indifference to the 
fate of those puny creatures she
once contrived to create in an idle
moment of curious speculation,
whose presence in her domains have
become increasingly irksome with
their absurd penchant to live
dangerously, challenging her
eminent puissance. She has decided
to simply engage in counter-irritation
expunging from view all that is
familiar to these defiant creatures
lavishing upon her landscape a
vanishing shield of deep, white snow.

 

Macro/Micro Biosphere

In the periodic scrutiny of 
her vast estates the peerless
Chatelaine evaluates each and 
every one of the multitudinous
chambers resting under her purview.
Judging the state of their entropic
stability and the level of blase
oblivion, she dispatches her
staff hither and yon to embark
upon a protocol of cleansing of
ennui, so to speak. The forces
loyal to her imperial majesty
called forth, the action begins. In
one area, volcanic eruption to braise
the landscape, another swept clear
by tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones.
Here an earthquake to shake loose
the dust of the ages, and there
raging wildfires of forest renewal.
Floods spreading an oceans-worth
of scrubbing urban blight. In one
overlooked corner, Nature herself
gently scatters a purifying net of
gossamer-light frozen stars to 
heap themselves into a plush 
comforter of immaculate white.
On that pure counterpane all
that is left of the glossy black pelt
of a small creature whose presence
pure white indifferently betrayed.

Nocturnal, Diurnal

Yes, we are pleased to make a
closer acquaintance with our
small guest, heretofore mysteriously
phantomlike, leaving ghostly imprints 
and droppings from night-time raids
nibbling backyard shrubs, but here, 
now, present and accounted for. 
Though in fact, it might be we who 
are the guests within the creature's 
natural environment, co-opted, converted,
denuded of nature's careful screen
for her vulnerable creatures. We
may, in our innocent arrogance
be doing the little fellow and all
those others who drop by daily for
nourishment during these frigidly
snowy winter months, a decidedly
ill-thought disservice. For in their
own innocent and growing
dependence on the offerings of
seeds and nuts they become, perhaps,
less given to caution when caution
is always prudent. Even while we
intend them aid from forage scarcity
we become responsible for possible
threats to their longevity in the
ferociously lingering presence of
stealthily malicious predators.

Undesirable Alien

I'm surprised to note
how frail and grey she is
memory still clinging
to a strident-voiced
robust woman who
ordered my life
in disagreeable ways;
our years together
one long war of attrition
me forever backing up
helplessly ceding territory.

She's still the same
says American Immigration
won't let her cross borders
considers her an undesirable alien.
I agree, feel it is
extremely undesirable that
parents alienate offspring
but the parallel dies hastily
she'd never understand - the joke.

Union organizer
    egalitarian
        agitator extraordinaire
            anarchist molded from
Red Emma clay; my mother.
Any cause hers so long as
for The Underdog. She hardly
noticed me dogging her wake
wondering when she'd notice.

From her I learned that
everyone was equal in this world
and those who were nonetheless unequal
she championed. Her dedication to
causes not the idle whim of a bored mind
but a mind unreeling memory of
    dead and maimed relatives
her own eyes oddly asymmetrical
still lodging shrapnel particles;
Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks.

She's a tiny, wizened
still pugnacious beatnik, peacenik
predating in the search for justice
the coinage of those words. Her
lexicon the robust denial
of aggression yet I still
recall her busy and aggressive
denials of one child's demands.

The world and its twisted vision
remains her wayward child.

Spring Thaw

It's below zero
with a mean wind
under a clear blue sky,
crisp as only a
winter sky can be;
sun hard and white
glimmering the snow, which
whipped off branches
cuts our faces.
We slide into a ravine
then snowshoe along
a frozen creekbed
tufting the snow
in a criss-cross grid
crossing paths of grouse
and snowshoe rabbit;
hear chickadees calling
as they pick seeds
from the spruce overhead.
Soon we climb out
clump over the flats again
making our way to
the large creek
where we look down
from the heights
recall the thaw
two days earlier
see great grey ice pans
two feet thick
chunked on the banks
and the water freed,
eddies and churns
yellow with waste
defying the season.

Snapshots

There they are
in neat black and white
and decked like cards.
First those of the
children loping wide-legged,
snowshoeing through the ravine
and down the frozen riverbed.

There's one with bare treetops
as though arrested in surprise
that anyone would be so silly
as to fall backward
intent on taking pictures.

Another, your son's mouth
round with anger,
you plaguing him with your
'stand right there
    and look natural'.

And then your daughter,
wearing the apples of your eyes
on her cheeks,
weaving filaments of hair
over her face to hide
from the lens.

Off the Masham-Eardley Road

November under a
fleece-shearing sky
we hike trail past
beaver-sharp poplars
a polyphony of birdcall
and chickadees like summer's
castoff leaves
scrabbling dirt.

We pass Mud Lake
dark and smooth as
      isinglass
white birch repeating
and repeating
on its surface
like a Thomson painting.

Shying toward us
over a granite litter
a lavender-coated mink
slinking white-bellied
to peer feverish eyes
then evaporate.

The forest is acrid
and a pheasant panics
the undergrowth in a
pandemonium of leaves.
A grouse flaps high
in the branches of an ash

and a woodpecker clowns
down-hanging a branch
like a drunken bat.
We meet other solitudes
in this Gatineau place.

Neighbours

It's as though
the house next door
is haunted
how ridiculous in this day
yet I've met the neighbours
on the other side
and across the road
have lived here
after all
six years.

There must be
someone there;
garbage is placed
beside the curb
voices sometimes
ghost the summer air
and miraculously
the lawn is always trim
the driveway shovelled.

Sheets sometimes
flap in the breeze
like frantic wraiths.
Perhaps words of greeting
stop shy and silent
on their tongues.

Perhaps they note
our garbage and cut grass
my wraithlike sheets
and shovelled drive
and fear to meet
the ghosts
inhabiting my home.


 

 

Forever Loving

There was a time when chivalrous 
knights proclaimed their love 
wearing their ladies' colourful scarves 
redolent of their beloved's scent, 
over the cold, hard steel of their battle
geared armour. The more temperate 
armed themselves with that emotional 
wealth of love by inscribing their
beloved's name deep within their 
beating hearts, to last as long as their 
hearts might. Some loving statements 
scratched a comely lass's name on 
granite boulders, to last as long as 
climate and weather permitted, truly 
a love making its name to posterity's 
legend. Lovers' names pencil-scribbled
or pen-knife-incised on park benches 
and the bark of handy trees made the 
effort to last, at least as long as love's 
whimsy. But we live now in a fleeting
age where newness lasts a heartbeat 
before it stales. And so, too, it seems 
with love, I mused, arrested by the large
neat letters writ on a smooth, new
snowfall. Meant to last the blink
of a restless eye, so discreetly
to vanish in the warming sun. A 
paean to 21st Century inconstancy.

 

Survival of the Fittest

Glowing bright as a living
flame against the frigid stark
whiteness of the landscape,
the wary cardinal is patient,
lingering on tree branches,
hovering over the temptation
of seeds and nuts awaiting his
selection. Alert to danger, he
flicks his head to either side,
and waits. Tiny chickadeees
equally vigilant, flicker similarly
from branch to winter-nuded
twigs, to finally surrender to
the appeal to staunch their 
hunger. It is best that they
remain on guard, for they cannot
know that the ravaging beast
that stealthily stalks them to
oblivion is not as immune as
they to nature's climate excess.

 

Solar Fire

Placidly sailing in the vast ocean
of pacific blue, the winter sun
has taken command of the sky. A
convoy of crows streak noisily through,
flinging themselves across the still
expanse of the afternoon, triumphant
in existence. Crowning the nude 
forest canopy, its brilliance
sparkling through the landscape,
the sun's searching fingers of light
glow on the snow-heaped forest floor,
the setting sun torching tree trunks
in a glory of solar ice-conflagration.

The Stars That Fell

All sound is hushed in the
frozen woods. No fierce wind to
give voice to the agonized clacking
of tree tops, they remain silent,
nakedly immobilized. In the valley
of the forested ravine its creek
too is silent, frozen and at one
with the landscape lush with new
snow, as downy-white and lightly
feathered as a swan. No birds sing
this icily ephemeral day, though
through the raw canopy of trees,
the sun, luminous as breaking dawn,
bursts its fierce bright light,
piercing the atmosphere of late
afternoon. A mere whisper of
breeze tantalizes a shimmering 
veil of snow from a burdened
branch. In this magical arras, 
each needle and twig, branch and
limb is softly limned in pure white
crystal stars that fell from the sky.