Old Friends

When we were young and
gravitated toward others like
ourselves, we took each other's
friendship as it came, relying
and confiding and sharing
experiences, aiding ourselves
on the journey from childhood
to maturity, a gaggle of friends
whose frequent companionship
gave pleasure on the shores of
life's passage. Intervening years
of marriage and family created
another bond, but one that
dissolved to a degree the reliance
on friends as other concerns and
responsibilities sundered the ties
and long lapses of comradeship
turned into decades of benign
forgetfulness. Until a half-century
elapsed and the gravitational urge
of memory restored the will to
fill the long hiatus. Voices may
be unfamiliar in the absence of
youth, and physical presence
and bearing strangely altered
but for the affection brimming
in moist, faded eyes recalling and
embracing a friendship that never
really vanished, just temporarily
set aside, to be joyfully renewed
everyone concerned grey and
wrinkled, but humour intact.

Canoeing

Our strokes are rhythmically
measured, firm and strong,
the measure of our bodies'
recall, the method of moving a 
canoe swiftly and surely along the
surface of a northern lake
not forgotten, nor the care to
avoid deadheads, nor rocks
appearing where none should be
to trap the unwary canoeist. The
lake has welcomed our presence,
warmer by far than the ambient
temperature above, sending 
mild moist gusts to mollify us, 
aware of the cold, the wind and 
the rain within a fierce onslaught
determined to blow us off 
our course, arrogant in their
combined presumption that
they can, as our paddles defy
them, sluicing the lake, pulling
up bright pearls of lakewater,
our paddles defying them. A
loon surfaces to goad or compliment
us on our journey, a laughing lunatic.

 

When A Tree Falls

Oh yes, it is most assuredly so,
that when a tree falls in a forest
it is heard, belying the archly
mystic questioning of that reality.
First, the attention-fixing splitting
of the air as the tree cracks
its agony loosing its trunk once
so proudly firm to the pranking
insistence of the wind gauging 
where now lies its weakest point,
well penetrated from bark to
heartwood repeatedly, mercilessly
by Pileated woodpeckers preying
on larvae deeply embedded, 
slowly draining the tree of its
living integrity, hastened by the 
voracious bird's appetite. Now,
the snag of the double-masted pine
yawns in raw appeal to the sky
as the trunk crashes in a long,
slow motion of gravitational
entropy, each successive crash
the anguished resistance of other
trees, innocent bystanders to the 
criminal assassination through
complicity of insect, bird and wind
succumbing to this force majeur
until a swath of smashed trunks,
limbs and branches, exuding the
fragrance of sweet desperation as
their life's green sap ebbs away
leaving behind stark evidence of an
unfortunate natural atrocity.

The Understanding

Such bold courage, that
they risk much in the hope
of gaining little. The trade
of a nut in hand at the
potential of a pounce
that might prove deadly. Yet
undeterred, they confront us,
those tiny furred creatures
with the intelligence to know 
our presence from long
familiarity heralds the
distribution of nuts in places
they expect within their
very own territory; we the
visitors, they the denizens,
our small dog disinclined
but for occasional runs to
threaten their safety. They
have no real practical need 
to face us at close range when
their caches are full, but yet
they do so, awaiting our
careful aim, their solicitation
appreciated and duly honoured.

 

The Child Within

She let nothing faze her
when she was young,
determined to create
challenges beyond what life
brings, and to meet them,
every one, from achieving
academic heights to
ministering to the spiritual
and emotional and physical
needs of others, while
satisfying her inner conceit
of self-sufficiency. Now
middle-aged, experienced
as a ministering pastoral
chaplain and solver of a
myriad of conundrums, she
has never left her inner child
unattended, much less
abandoned, and when times
are right, she recalls her
young self, cajoling within
herself its reappearance.

 

Feathered Parenthood

They were, after all, only
submitting to nature's blueprint,
instinct informing they must
counter-migrate back to
traditional nesting grounds 
with the unfailing arrival of spring,
to indulge in nest-building and the 
raising of feathered progeny.
Only later, months on, do they
realize the folly inherent in
instinct when squalling juveniles
roost on branches, flap awkward
wings and screech their ceaseless
demands to be fed instanter, the 
woods ringing with their terse, 
piercingly entitled demands of
weary parents courting denial 
that survival instinct prevents.

Summer Closing

Nature has drawn the shade
of evening daylight to
introduce a steadily waning
day as summer begins its
benighted journey toward
fall and the sun eclipses
beyond the day's landscape.
Forest fungi celebrate in
autumn hues of purple, white,
orange and mortuary blues
as lichens accelerate their
shelf life on the corpses of
once thriving trees. Rain 
visits in more robust events
and the odour of must and
decay pervade the forest as it 
sighs in the prevailing winds,
bidding adieu to all its
migrating guests and settles
down as the local innkeeper
of these natural precincts,
to prepare for winter's advent.

Glimpsed...Gone

He is secretive and swift, a
whirlwind of flying red pelt,
vulpine backglance; right and
then left, yet focus ahead, its tail
a brushfire of crackling speed,
flanks in muscular tandem
with its flighting gait. The
fox melts into the wet, green
welcoming underbrush of the
forest, escaping the incredulous
glare of human eyes, uncertain
that the momentary image they
witnessed is a phenomenon
of nature in their brief incursion
within the dusky forest confines.

Survival

There, he has it, his reward
for patiently skimming the lake,
diving and surfacing, mournfully
at times, maniacally sometimes calling
his lot in life as a primal-featured
animal, black and white, those
contrasts reflecting the tenor
and timbre of his calls resounding
and ricocheting over the lake,
hitting the forest beyond and the
granite outcroppings balancing
the shoreline reflecting the
Canadian Shield. His prize, a
silver and survival-desperate
rainbow, struggling to be free
while the loon has its own purpose;
the caught fish a meal to be relished,
whole and yet live, another of
nature's many little exquisite details
in her blueprint of fundamentals.

The Still of the Night

Finally, the robust wind
roaring over the wilderness lake
has banished the bleak, low-slung
clouds that battered the 
surrounding forest with thunder
and rain in successive assaults
now releasing the stars to blink
in the lake's surface skin,
illuminating the loon skimming
its surface, loosing its lunatic
call, then submerging, the
ghost of its laughter echoing
across the lake. From the
wild forest beyond, land
creatures too raise a chorus
to the moon and the stars as a 
ululating wolf howl rises to
swell across the lake in a 
mystic orchestral performance.

Sparking the Stars

The forest of pine, hemlock
and spruce, their silhouettes
darkly expressive in leaning trunks
bent to prevailing winds, encircle
the night-still waters of the
wilderness lake. From its far
reaches, a loon cries its haunting
call. Tending a woodfire on an
island shore, three people and 
a dog huddle for warmth. A
gust of errant wind sends the 
living fire of sparks skyward
from the glowing embers as
the clouds finally part, permitting
the sparks to prick the sky,
dangling there as stars,
radiant in the firmament.

 

Canoe Camping

What an unholy trinity in
cold, wind and rain, with the
audacity to simultaneously
gift the August wilderness lake
with their malign presence.
Misery incarnate overtakes the 
nature lovers who long
anticipated a brief sojourn to 
savour the challenges faced by 
their ancestors answering life's 
anomalous opportunities to forge 
a new beginning in a savage, 
uncolonized land. Those pioneers 
survived and so too will those 
whom nature greets with grim 
obstacles as they learn to fend 
for themselves, coping with a 
brief introduction to adopting 
rudimentary skills of survival.

The Portage

The bow of the red canoe draws
near the outtake, the restless
lake incited by a cutting
wind laps the shoreline's
pickerel weed, its lavender wands
hailing the paddlers' arrival
at the portage. The trail is 
steep and narrow, brightly
orange, despite the forest gloom,
the pines tall and straight as
a ship's mast. Roots and rocks
plot to trap the hikers' boots
but long familiarity with such
terrain inspires the confidence
of those whose covenant with
nature has been reciprocated.

Echoing Past

The sky has cast a transparent
veil of mist across the
length of this lake where
sturdy winds rake the surface
to rippling swells until
pale yellow foam gathers
on the shore and whitecaps 
instruct those hardy Canadians
their canoe, heavy with
provisions for a wilderness
camping expedition to be
forewarned, prepared to
stroke the lake compellingly
toward the beckoning green
forested destination as loons
surface to call their dominance.

Nature's Jewels

In my emerald-green garden
nature nurtures clusters of
tiny, round fruit upon a
planted vine, allowing me 
the fond fiction that tending 
to the welfare of this 
edible-bearing vine results 
in pleasure at my table,
where in fact it is the soil
nature has provided, 
the sun she sets high above, 
with the occasional interruption 
of its blazing majesty to 
usher in clouds obscuring the 
sapphire sky, dropping rain 
like diamonds from above, 
settling upon the fruit like 
gleaming, priceless pearls.

 

Forest Rain

First heralding wind, then
pounding rain entered the
scene of a summer morning
cleansing the atmosphere of
a stalled dry spell to
re-introduce vibrancy of
colour, burnished and glazed
in hues of pungent green crowns
and pumpkin orange needles
padding the forest floor.
Great crystal drops sit
suspended, shining back the
enhanced twilight of the
forest interior with its
madly dashing stream
suffused with the glee of
action uncapped by rainfall.

 

The Forest Lake

Above, skies of blue and
white comforters in free float,
echoed in the mirror of the
placid surface of the lake,
within the summer forest.
A place of serene beauty
is that lake, and its
sheltering woods. Lazy, fat
tadpoles await their watery
green transformation, and
clouds of tiny fish obediently
school themselves to crowd
the water in orderly formation.
Turtles rise to the surface,
the sun glancing gently on
their portable homes. A great
blue heron spreads its vast wings
and flies wide and languorously
over the forest lake, one end
to the other, to settle among
sheltering pines, and preens.

And I Thank You

There are those people in
life's experience who have
bitten deeply from the root of
bitterness and gall, slaked their
thirst greedily from the goblet
of resentment and ire,
compromised their inherent
humanity in a fierce 
oppositional denial of the
goodness in others, since
they are so engaged in
denying their own in word
and deed, claiming in one
breath awareness of what
love represents and in the next
hissing the bile of vituperative
rancor, subjecting amazed
others to the full thrust of 
psychotic fury, then sweetly
end the diatribe with the
invitation to have a good day
and so, I thank you, my dear.

Tending the Garden

Ah, there -- snip! Gone the 
spent blooms, and there, snap! 
The dried floral stalks. Now, 
gently lift the gregariously
self-cloning coral bells from
their risky perches between the
pathway pavers and give them
a new home in the garden.
Snatch the arrogant Ladies Mantle
pups appearing everywhere, to
crowd out more valued garden
specimens and while at it, the
forget-me-nots, for their time
is past. But do leave the lovely
self-seeding Canterbury bells
for their bright cheery chimes
of colour do so delight us.
Divide the hostas with their
magnificent foliage of shape
and shade, and replenish the 
garden with fresh appeal. The
lilies and Monarda, Black-eyed
Susans and phlox, coreopsis and
coneflowers will thank you dearly.

Hello, There!

It is not just, alas, that his
aural faculties have dimmed
with the passage of years,
he mournfully stated, 
bald head gleaming in the sun,
but his brain now refuses to
recognize the order of words
it hears. The hearing aid,
granted, clarifies sound most
certainly, so he cringes
when a faroff item is unwrapped,
scratching at his sensitivities.
But the import of a statement?
Its full meaning and intent?
Unfathomable, meaningless,
impossible to decipher, he
groaned, in despair. Nodding,
his tale of woe sounds familiar.
But though I share his experience
my reaction is not his, for
what fails to penetrate my
consciousness I feel no
reason to lament, when its
source is of little intelligent
moment to me, you see.

 

Companions

In this, the height of summer,
the urban forest presents a
monochromatic world of
dense green dominating the
landscape of August. Wild
raspberry canes and thimbleberry
shrubs are flush with bashfully
hidden sweet red fruit.
Damselflies and Dragonflies
poetically arabesque their mythic
secret game in the still silence
of the wooded ravine's lazily
spiralling creek flush after a
morning rainfall. A fluffed
dwarf of a downy woodpecker
browses its plentiful opportunities.
Beside us, a very small dog
trots companionably, oblivious
to the relationship that human
communion deprived him from,
his nature-intended habitat.

Cat and Mouse

Miaow, Miaow! A game whose
puzzling purpose could not
rationally prove the irrational
conclusion that an electronic
device is amusing itself at
the expense of my admittedly
shallow wits, but then, what
other belief can conceivably
emerge as this computer mouse
I rely upon teases and bedevils me,
frustrating all my limited amateur
attempts to foil its independence
as it flirts with mayhem,
goading me in my efforts to
restrain its wicked sense of humour
defying my puny moves with its
erratic manoeuvres that I,
its presumed controller, seek to
impose to no avail; the mouse
giddy with its newfound sense of
power and defiance, a willing
and trusted mechanical slave
to my expectations no more.

 

This Operetta

This morning's operetta boasts
all the elements of a lavish
stage setting, the lush foliage
of my garden, with its brash
bursts of colour, the softly
plush texture of leaf and petal
against the ocean of blue
with sheepishly grazing
clouds nibbling the sky
to feed the puffy-white and
transform it in shades and
plenitude bringing drama to the
garden serenity as a butterfly
settles drowsily on a golden
sunflower and the sun
obligingly, until lightning
strikes the sky, coddles blooms
to follow its western passage,
while a blazing-red cardinal
peals its sublime oral paean
to nature's divine perfection.

In Waiting

When, years ago she first
entered our home to take up
residence as an honoured guest,
the creation of sensitive, gifted
hands and an empathetic artist's
vision of grace in old age
competing with nature's
sublime design, we thought
of her as emblematic of her kind,
a journey we had yet to take,
still in the distant future,
viewing her presence as a gift
to ourselves, symbolic of an
inevitable, mystic force of nature
to which all living things succumb,
taking pleasure in the serenity
of her complacent smile
as though at rest with the
certain knowledge of life
breeding life as the original
returns to dust. Now, as the days
since then have evolved into 
years, I behold my visage
mirroring her own and wonder
that I have come to resemble her,
or is it that she always was a
reflection of me, in waiting...?

On Her Birthday

Finding just the right card
striking a humorous note
is not that relaxed a
pursuit since you're older
than she is and from your
perspective other people's
aging in a frantic effort
not to catch up with yours
is a matter of personal hilarity,
but not so for her, so
easy goes it, bypass
those clever little aging jabs
and be good about it;
an anodyne sentiment, 
on this occasion, will do.

 

The Time To Go

A chance encounter with a
stranger can bring tears
bitter enough to burn the
eyelids of someone who had
no intention of reacting to
a well-meaning stranger's
quiet remarks. People do
tend on occasion to immediately
warm to others in the presence
of small furry creature 
companions. And so, she said
how much our lone little fellow
reminded her of her own
small pet hugely cherished
who lived to a full old age.
It was a poodle, miniature,
like yours, who also died, a
beloved friend, at 19. Strange,
when she was a pup, people
would confront her admiringly,
mentioning in an aside how much
she reminded them of their own
small black dog whose time had
come. And then, yours did, many
years later. On this later occasion
one proffered comfort in
reminding that there is a time
to go, while the other lamented
the time was right, but not
for them, not then, not ever.

Terror Alert

Dear rational thinker, we
have a shared secret, do
we not, one that impels
us to study the clear evidence
as facts support, to the
conclusion that hate-maddened
psychopaths assembling
around themselves the
similarly pathological
afflicted deserve little
sympathy from the very
targets their unreasoning
fury attacks, maims, kills
leading us to believe their
nihilistic campaign of
terror must be destroyed
before they succeed in
annihilating the reasonable
innocent among us struggling
to live without fear, in peace.