High On The Wind

High above the naked forest
canopy a raven hoists a lift
on the wild wind, appearing
suspended in place, enjoying
its defiance of gravity with no
need to propel itself flapping
wings, buoyed along, a guest
of Aeolus. Tree tops sway in
an accommodating trance of
flexible preservation, bypassing
the fate of a stiff old pine 
venerable in height, girth and
luxuriance of needles, now
splayed ignominiously on the
forest floor, the sad destiny of
a proud fallen giant, its snag
still reaching appealingly to
the cloud-shuttling bruised sky.
Wheezing hoarsely through
the forest, the wind probes
other vulnerabilities, ripping a
poplar from its tenacious 
mooring; a cowering stand of
slender birches from their
insecure perch within spring's
damp soil. The raven, revelling
in its perch on the shoulder of
the wind, sends down its own
hoarse call of homage to
nature's rabid wrecking ball.

The Days in Careful Measure

Although her skin hangs like
crepe and her eyes hover
    lost in the canyon of her face
she speaks of the future and I
turn my ear to her conceits. She
would soon be back in her place
that no one could plump like her.
This is the woman who dwarfed my

slight frame. Now her flighting
hands are vague shadows on
     perilous sticks and her hair
no longer dyed, springs distant
on her skull. Chemicals budded

her taste to ashes leaving no pleasure
in fueling. She moves these days
     in careful measure, one boneleg
then another; laying fond memory
on acquisitions no longer hosting

pleasure. Satisfying now a meagre
patience, drawing mind across a
     printed page. Inhaling drags while
drawing notice to her new non-smoking
habit. Frustrations ebb and flow
     unrelieved by friendly voices.

Her life has paced the decay of her
flesh and she follows the corruption
of her cells hypnotically. Finally
     slips skinny shanks between
hospital sheets, her world becomes
a white attendance punctuated by

ampules of powdered highs. Even her
family now come to visit this
     vanishing member, sending
daffodils to lighten the landscape
of her room. Their bright insouciance
pricks her, drawing as they do hopes

of waking while she is looking for
     comfort in thoughts of sleep.

Vision

All the length of our days
you charged my air
with the passion of life
and our time was a
sharing of experience.

Only lately I've noticed
at night beside me
you lie subdued,
not yourself.

Dynamo, where are you?
You lie here, clutching sleep,
electric presence absent.

I see that you and I
now practise nightly
solitude for the
command performance.

Voyage to Strange  

Latitudes

In the strange latitudes
of that hemisphere
animals wear shifting eyes
wind blows a hollow song
through aeolian strings
set on a razor's edge.

                    There
the newborn adorn
dark furniture like a
ship captain's parlour
displaying mementos
of exotic voyages;
mewling objets d'art.

                   and
love is played at feelingly,
coequals plucking sole eyes
doing the rounds
in comradely fashion
so all can see through
future's mists.

                       There
mountains blossom
bright thorn flowers;
earth opens welcome
chasms for escape from
terrifying sameness.

In that country
trespassers are welcomed
in boiling cauldrons
spitting primal brew
                    and
heat brings saline dew
to unsuspecting brows.

Bumper Crop

The highway stretches
a hot grey ribbon
frenzied traffic evaporating
over the horizon
while on either side
wide green spaces, trees
introduce the country
to the city beyond.

Nervously facing traffic
the juvenile groundhog waits
mustering momentum for crossing.
If it manages one double lane
a boulevard will render rest
               encouragement
for the other half.

Does it know
that wild thing why it must
make that crossing?
       Does it notice
far beyond on the other side
the activity there?
Crows, undertakers
     carrion-eaters
zealously perform their function.

The Cosmic Nature 

of Termagants

Three fur balls of
ferocious imperative
madly winding a trap.
Metabolizing instanter
the matter they've eaten
then tailing each other
in ravening passion.

Two fur balls of
glutinous hunger
whirling a trap in
lunatic frenzy. Sapping
the energy from the fur
ball they've gnawed
and tailing each other
with furious intent.

One lightning virago
a cyclone of terror
whipping its tail around
the confines of hell;
nipping its backend
with determined devotion;
gnawing acrobatic jaws.

Soon all is still in the
empiricist's trap. He
peers in the deathjar
with curious detachment;
fingers a skeleton half
inside itself and busily
writes in his diary:

Scenario Toward
This Depleting Earth.

Prideful Fall

On seeing the gleaming long
slide someone had taken
in the spring muck of the
trail she briefly mused on
how careless and inexperienced
some people are. Priding herself
on her faultless sense of balance,
her boundless energy and
muscular legs long accustomed
to the demands of hiking over
difficult terrain, she plunged ahead
with her signature confidence,
descending the long forested
hill, taking care to avoid the
still-prevalent but gradually
melting ice pack. Forging a
swift but carefully chosen route,
basking in the warmth of the sun,
the freshening wind, the cool, cool
atmosphere, something quite
contrary occurred as her
leading foot found a mud slide
where firm soil should be and
the seconds it took for her
rear to glide deep into the muck
as her unprepared body hugged
the welcoming forest floor
seemed an eternity of suspense
as she viscerally responded to
spurn the mud's embrace
... and could not.

Dilemma

Without so much as the
bare courtesy of an
enquiring by-your-leave
some presence hitherto
unknown to me has arrogantly
taken night-time possession
of that which I hold most dear
as my primary function,
effectively obviously having
persuaded my innocent mind
that its control has been
authorized by my creative muse.
Whom herself I told to 
account for gross disloyalty.
While it is undoubtedly
admirable that a poetic
genius capable of creating
divine verse has taken up
study in my brain, I hold it
to be most unfortunate
that during daylight hours
it obdurately refuses to share
the gems it mines with me,
that very mind's possessor.

Spring Mist

Over the bare forest canopy
returning hawks spiral
in flight, whistle their
predatory presence to the
small, furred creatures below.
From the spire of an evergreen
comes the bell-like call of
a bluejay, passing through.
Nature has tipped her sky's
bowl to a cool, steady drip.
From the forest valley where
winter snow runoff has
swelled the creek, the
rushing waters provide a
countervailing chorus of
waterfalls, churning swamp
gas odour over storm-felled
trees crowding the water's edge.
Mist rises steadily obscuring
the delicate details of trees
tentatively in bud; nuthatches
and chickadees flit through the 
network of hemlock branches.

Gravely Quantum Gravity

I have, in the innocence of an
alert layman's consciousness
of the world about me, 
arrived at the astonishing
realization that appears,
astoundingly, to have escaped
the notice of scientists who so
pride themselves on their 
observational notice, that over
the very course of my own
considerable lifetime Nature has
seen fit to alter her balance of
gravity. This is a tried-and-true
reality of experience beyond
the merest shadow of a doubt.
Settled science, in other words,
and there exists a veritable legion
of others similarly for whom
Nature has demonstrated her
awesome power to alter the
presumed laws of gravity, who
can attest to my proven theory
that once, some seventy years
earlier, gravity's pull was infinitely
less compelling than now it
most certainly happens to be.

Colossus

She is massively endowed
with excessive flesh, an external
Goliath, of modest height
and sweet disposition, the
viscera in her abdominal cavity
cramped for space, weighted
by the jellied mass that constricts
them. Despondent at what
she has become? Not the least,
for oxygen and blood yet reach
her brain and stimulate her
thoughts and move her mouth to
action in tandem with her spirit.
She engages in animated 
conversation, sufficient energy 
firing her brain in lieu of
her limbs for which exertion
has become a faded memory.
Her proven culinary talents
far surpass those of most, yet
her meals most frequently
come delivered post-haste from
the fast-food joints she favours.

Moody Natures

She is in one of her
famously grumpily moody
phases. Just another of her
recognizably crabby moods
we think we know so well
but which always puzzle us
until we meet people who
frequently succumb to the
same character failings
windily grumping on about
their sociopathic dissatisfactions.
We can readily leave their
acid company with great
relief, but nature's tantrums
are miserably unavoidable
and that is a fact of life
we have no options against.

CANARD

The richness of tradition
embroiders the very air
as swallows execute
diurnal serial forays
a shifting haze 
melts over canelli
sun-faceted oriel windows
lean over narrow streets
dreamily recalling
nocturnal assignations
the water lapping
         darkly on
baroque splendour
decaying under the
inexorable weight
of progress where
beauty is an impediment
yet gondoliers still paddle
and their songs
swift sightseers
through the ancient gate,
crude iron foundry
lest under stone seraphim
leaning caryatids
and David's star atop
a biblic horoscope;
the ghosts of
innocent Shylocks
still lurk behind
mullioned windows
scribed into
slanted posterity.

Button

Oh, how we miss that
bright little spark and in her
memory we wax eloquent 
on her presence throughout
two decades of our lives
together in a harmony of
celebration. A memoriam
candle burns brightly
and briefly once each month
before her image, in recall
of her impish intelligence,
her canny ability to
communicate with us, her
joy in embellishing our
lives with laughter and
adventure. The candle, an
aphorism of that cherished
creature's very own bright,
too-brief position in our lives,
her loss diminishing our
happiness, her memory
following our every days'
thoughts of her unique place
in our bereaved lives.

That Winning Formula

The age-old question of what
binds two to a vibrant tandem
for a lifetime of shared experience
bonding them in a covenant
of caring love, trust and
appreciation for one another
over all others can have its
expression in odd ways. Take,
for example, her passion for
gardening and his pleasure 
in the beauty that ensues under
her tender care. His own efforts
aiding hers make it all possible
as they age. While she stores
over-winter bulbs and corms
in their basement, when he 
comes across stray beetles or
bugs down there, he carefully
scoops them from the basement
floor to tuck them tidily in with
the hibernating flora in the
committed belief that all living
organisms deserve to enjoy life.

Flash Mob

A veritable riot of action
and reaction, a swift
pandemonium of alertly
possessive tiny furred creatures
and those colourfully feathered,
congregated to snatch and peck
the seeds and nuts conscientiously
scattered in aid of their survival
creating the atmosphere of
convivial communion despite
taking place in a cold and
miserable deluge that would
bring nasty discomfort to those
distributing birdseed and nuts,
but seemed to motivate those
creatures to frenzied activity.
The crimson cardinal, slate juncos
song sparrows and chickadees
flitting in nearby shrubs, and
the territorial-flipped sharing
of squirrels, tiny pugnacious red,
the entitled black, and the 
cautiously aware greys. Even
the impish black hanging by
its clever hind paws from the
swinging bird feeder, nibbling
seed, monopolizing opportunity
until a four-part altercation
of offended propriety urged
surrender to the ebbing patience of
the birds in this frantic alter-world.

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 snow-shovelled drive
and fear to meet
the ghosts
inhabiting my home.

 

Her Passion of Will

So many years ago when she
was young and beautiful,
strong-willed and passionate
she wondered where her white knight
was bashfully lingering, loathe
to reveal his adoring presence. She
felt anguished by her pressing need
to be cherished. Love alone would not
do, and she was uncertain just
what truly signified love. One 
suitor after another surfaced
from that vast ocean of life, but
over time each was discarded 
for they cared far more for
themselves than they did for her
and she reflected her dismay in
dismissing them as inauthentic.
Now older, somewhat wiser, he has
at last appeared, bearing little
physical resemblance to her
imagined knight. A trifle shopworn
with time and grizzled in appearance
he offers her love and the devotion
of his soul. He tends carefully to
her needs and like a gardener
in the famed garden of love,
brings her sad, glad heart, no end
of sumptuous, fragrant bouquets.

Home Invasion

Curiosity surely impelled the tiny
creature to explore an earthen
pathway unfamiliar and doubtless
intriguing, and through it, gained
access to a parallel world entirely
alien, confusing and bitterly
adverse to the chipmunk's natural
longevity. In this universe no
green grass grew nor were 
edible seeds and nuts hanging
from approachable flora as 
nature's fauna have become
accustomed to experiencing. 
Instead there lurked two ferociously
predatory beasts who viewed the
timidly adventurous interloper
as prey to amuse them in their
leisurely trounces. Escape into a
welcoming soil passageway? Swiftly
leap and clamber a tree? Enter the
salvation of a welcoming cavity?
Nowhere in this universe of 
unforgiving surfaces so forbiddingly
averse to the familiar desperately
beckoned. And so, the prevailing
micro-pandemonium that ensued
held a stern, never to be repeated
lesson in caution, too late delivered.

The Spring Forest

Through a brief window in
the cloud-cast sky shone the
sun upon a still-frigid world
of departing winter. A ferocious
wind hurled the clouds to close
the blue gap and the world
turned a silvery grey. In the
forest below, its floor yet deep
in snow and ice the wind
bellowed through bare-branched
trees, and they clacked and moaned
in the tumult, casting aside
broken branches while long dead
trunks threw off dessicated
bark, leaving them unabashedly
gaunt and wasted, gloomily
naked of the facade of rot. The
swollen creek, roiling with 
melted snow, lifts the odour of
swamp gas into the grey
atmosphere. From above, a raven
croaks its desolate contempt.

Have You Heard?

It is a flippant remark --
here today, gone tomorrow,
but he truly was here today
and today is the day that
the man who had the
international ear attuned to
his opinion, that of a man 
steeped in the wisdom of
experience, is now also as
of this day, departed. It was
he who called the emergency
line, the very man whom 
prime ministers, aristocrats
of commerce and the wealthy
powerful called, to solicit his
expert advice. Now, he called
emergency health experts to
come, please, to his aid,
telling them "a 64-year-old
male is feeling very unwell".
They responded, sirens wailing,
speedily transiting from there
to here, too late to comfort
much less save this distinguished
man's time-expired life.

Her Household

In the house that Dame Nature
built, the ceiling has been
compromised, developed plumbing
problems, flooding those areas
below, though Madame appears
sublimely unperturbed at the
inconvenience experienced
by her countless complaining 
tenants. Their pleas do not stop
there, asking the heavens above
to judge how responsible she is
as a landlady of immense
real estate holdings, permitting
her staff wild parties engulfing
tenants with the dangers inherent
in volcanic eruptions, shifting
tectonic plates, oceanic tsunamis,
hurricanes and tornadoes. Nature
turning swiftly and lacking due
notice from an immaculate manager
of her vast estates to a careless,
slovenly bystander. This is no
way to run the business of land
ownership assuring satisfied rentals.

Coy Spring

Spring has so many faces --
from the benevolent facade of
bright sunny days and the
mission of rescuing the landscape
from winter's waning grip
to clear the ice and snow in
release of soil from its frigid
prison, to that of sneering fury
with biting wind curtsying in
tandem with defiant cold returning
the atmosphere to chuckling winter's
care. One might reasonably feel
that in complete fairness to
changing seasonal guard
the privilege be taken more
seriously than to reduce expectation
to misery, taunting, teasing,
flaunting the power of energetic
malice with a succession of storms
before finally relenting to admit
the entry of a kindly atmospheric
warmth, the heat of resurgent sun,
the cleansing gentleness of rain
the welcome return of songbirds.

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.

Apocrypha

In the beginning there was chaos
until a gregarious atom
encouraged a clubby atmosphere
where they all gathered and
finally, there was order.

At first there were hot gases
but then cool season prevailed
and minerals and metals crusted
the fires. One lone amoeba

suffered incurable hubris;
thought she could do better
and founded a dynasty
on her vision. In time, a
she-ape clambered down from the trees,

pointed at the sea and declared
'there is my Creatrix!'
named her daughter Eve and set
her the task of naming others.

So Eve chatted up giraffes
and elephants, whales and crickets.
She called a brash Adamai
snake-in-the-grass for offering
her figs when she said

she couldn't give a damnation
for his ignorance. Everything
was fine until he learned
to wield a pen while she

continued to till the earth.
Eve provided crops 
for their offspring and Adamai
pushed back the night of eternity

offering superiority and his
own rendering of truth;
that of himself as Supreme Creator
half of him up there,
the other half down here.

Letters Home/Sylvia Plath

She would be a meteor
a fabled Amazon of letters
         not for her the
half-life   the shrivelled ego
of the forgotten woman
who penned disappointment;
   she wrote this way to
encourage capricious fate
so in its dark unknowing way
it would know her for the
winner she willed herself to be.

She met a man with whom
she could meet her jealous Muse
with a voice like the
          thunder of God
knew without knowing
what dark forces moved in her;
that the huge, sad hole
she was destined to fall into
was merely removed in time.

       Letters to Mother
celebrated success after success
          and unbridled pride
the sure knowledge that no one
was as gifted    as feted as
joyously filled with life and
promise as herself     as her
dear, lovely Ted with the
voice like the thunder of God.

Joy brimmed her letters
spilled from the pages
tripped off alphabets spelling
beauty and talent and pride and
determination and that intense
preoccupation with all that
mattered:   self. Why didn't
Mummy ever twig, respond to that
outpouring, warn that no one

as happy as her daughter
could possibly pen those arcane
depths of despair, loneliness
and unperceived loss?  The
letters traversed a one-way
street with no room for
marginal notes, no corrections
no warnings, no hint of cessation.

Motherplant

Roseate and convoluted bud
what a delight you are
             like a foetus
curled and living green
suckling sustenance from
the androgynous motherplant
with the ridiculous name of
Schlumbergera. Even the

name made me think of
slumbering and rocking my
own roseate pearl to sleep;
she who is now grown and has
that strange convoluted buttress
of will, shuttering me
            out of her shell.

Perspective

What rain?  my father
used to say - - -
      it's only
                God,
                        crying.

Oh, he was an
irreverent man
and I was left to
grapple with the
compelling vision
of a broody God
crying fits like me
hands fisted in hard balls
of angry frustration
showering the earth
clouds insufficient
handkerchiefs
to stem the overflow.