The Fullness of Time

When all else seems lost 
in the push and tug of time
the ebb and flow of our lives
there is left to us memory
and there are those treasured
albums not only in our minds
but those we so carefully
arrange chronologically as
photographs, an accounting
of joy and happiness when
fortune smiled and all was well.
Once young and vibrant,
expectant and hopeful,
living and loving our days
and finally arriving at the future
to discover the new reality
of deprivation when life turns
to loss and grief seeks proof
that happiness and the 
comfort of expanding time
once sweetly housed our dreams.

The Winter Feeder

They arrive quietly, politely
winging in sometimes singly
in pairs or within a flock
always grateful for winter
hospitality we are so happy
to offer them, in our plenty
and their need to survive
as best they can when nature
and the elements deprive
them of ease in foraging.
The blue jays of the northern
forest, the chickadees and
nuthatches, hairy and downy
woodpeckers, cardinals, doves
juncos all flock in during
daylight hours, with hordes
of quarrelsome squirrels and
nighttime raccoons and rabbits
honouring us with their
presence and their need.

The Unwanted Gift

Merry Christmas, the veterinarian
surgeon said sincerely, after
explaining post-operative
complications placing our
cherished little companion on
life support. Distracted, harried,
he doubtless meant well. Who
after all would wish to face
the disturbing vision of small 
and large animals in mortal
distress, requiring immediate
surgery from conditions seeming
to appear out of nowhere on
that date, necessitating the
nuisance of emergency surgery?
Nowhere, after all, but dire
health threats arising from an
inevitable combination of old age
and genetic inheritance. And dogs
are not, after all, human now, are
they? So get upset if you must at
the loss of a trusting and loving
companion, but do restrain yourself
and keep things in perspective
now, won't you, my friend?
In this unfortunate instance it
seems the operation was a total
success, its outcome, however not.

Lost To Us

He is everywhere, his
tiny self dogging us,
haunting every room of
the home that was his 
              and ours
but we grieve that
he is nowhere to 
be seen, simply no longer
with us, and we can no
longer swoop the
      little fellow
our dearest companion
into our arms again.

The memory of him
lives within our very core
warm and alive, but
it is now an essence. That
lovable and loving creature
to whom we gave our hearts
has taken a piece of those hearts
with him, leaving what was
left within us broken,
bereft, sorrowing. Nothing
can be done, he is gone
his life lost to us.

Prognosis of Hope

Strange, as a Christmas Eve
gathering place
but there they are,
grey-haired and frail,
elderly couples, hands
twisted in a unity of
care and devotion
awaiting word on
the welfare of their 
beloved pets, aged like
themselves, and in 
compromised health,
undergoing surgery
to prolong their lives
at this emergency
veterinary clinic, an
urgency of hope for survival
to retain the comfort
of restoring that
beloved creature to the
heart and hearth of a home
utterly bereft in grief
and abiding sorrow
without its presence.

Ghosted Rooms

It is a long anxious journey
fraught with fears 
taking a loved little creature
suddenly assailed with
serious symptoms of
elderly ill health, hoping
for a relieving diagnosis
and a miracle drug for
restoration of life as
it has been and the
desperation to prolong it.
Visualizing the happy
return home, until arrival
at the vast complex
staffed by a phalanx of
smiling professionals briskly
taking command, ushering
process and procedure,
diagnosis and prognosis
resulting in a long, lonely
utterly bereft journey
home, to ghosted rooms.

Restoring Hope

It represented a rational,
an entirely practical decision.
After years of catering to
the needs of their small
companion, its advanced age
and sudden ill health
its cherished presence
comforting their lives
had come to an end. And,
nor would they ever again
willingly suffer the anguish
of a repeat. This little fellow
would be their last. So, they
wept as they took him for
the catastrophic diagnosis
X-rays and blood tests had
revealed prompting that decision,
leading to euthanasia. Yet
now they await the alternative
results. They succumbed to
post-surgical recovery and
the hope that another year of
companionship had been snatched
impulsively, from death.

Describing Herself

Voice beyond peeved
as she tells me how
fed up she is
with her best friend,
always bemoaning her lot,
finding little to
her liking in life,
grumbling miserably
about everything, forever
in the blackest of moods,
never appreciating what
anyone does for her,
caution tells me not to
interrupt and confess
how familiar it all sounds
as though this is
herself describing herself.

Nightsport

The grey shadows of an
overcast afternoon in
the woods have crept away,
no longer there, and in their
place a darker shadow has
fallen, stifling the dim light
that lingers without hope
of prevailing for there
is no forestalling nightfall
chasing dusk's brief warning.

And so, the forest sighs
and prepares for sleep, while
prey whisper urgent messages
hiding in their havens, and
predators prepare to emerge
onto their hunting fields,
sharpening tooth and talon,
preparing to greet nature's
nocturnal challenge to the
pursuit of species survival.


 

Eugenics

So many times
we passed that place
knowing it was there
not really caring
          then

in young manhood
you draped your bones
on the pristine sheet
of the cagesided bed
and we hovered
in anguished disbelief

saw through a mist
a lifeline pierce
your transparent wrist
           and
the steady drop
transfixed us

this was reality.

Gently the doctor probed
your beloved frame
our foggy memories
for family history
and we waited release
from the dreadful error.

      Now every day
life sustaining injections
balance your present
consolidate your future. Now
every day we note
your altered need
vital dependence.

Daily we tread
a quicksand
in shades of fear and hope
    reading you
like a barometer.

Sisyphus

         Time
with its incurable habit
   tricks on
leaving us stranded
on shoals of absent minded kindness
benevolent neglect
memory of ourselves
as new growth
tender and green
challenges the future.

Future that was
our binary code
when fusion
produced fission
     and
we watched ourselves

split unrecognizable.
Still     habit
is incurable
     and still
we gather

over a mess of
scrambled eggs
       coffee
history behind us
celebrating ennui
      sometimes.

I watched your mind
expand to match
your gut.   You saw
my cover shrivel
company to illusion.

But there is comfort
last night you said
you like me.   We've
come a long way
     I'm grateful
although I question
    your taste.

Snowshoeing

On our modified
Green Mountain
Bear Paws
         we trek
this frozen streambed
this Ottawa Valley wood.

   Although we forbear
as sensitive barbarians
to obtrude on
neighbours' groundspace
     here
we tread seedlings
crack helpless frozen
branches
     heedlessly

marvelling in mirage
of beauty
unseen by cerebral lens
of laden boll and bough.
For long past years

this ambiance
has hosted hostility
defenceless eyes
     hidden
hatred of intrusion
through thickets
of familiarity.

Evidence of owl-
snatched hare
reveals itself
on pristine blanket
grouse tracks   droppings
mice-tentative steps

shield from us
their tenants.
We stride on      happy
oblivious harbingers
of unnamed animal dread.

 

Moonlit Landscape

A gibbous moon glints
off the landscape
as I leave a trail of
giant steps on the plump
luxury of a storm

following the tracks of mice
over the flats
then trailing a rabbit,
zig-zagging down the slope
where tree shadows

ghost the snow,
moon silvering the
silhouetted branches.
A hawthorn grasps my scarf
and my snowshoe is caught

by a stump playing
nighttime tricks.
Did that shadow move?
And did I hear nocturnal
hunting sounds?

My passage through these woods
is more dreamlike than real
and the fleeting shadows
may be no more than my
thoughts flitting the

forest of primal memory.

 

Omnipotent Impotence

If the divine spirit of creation
does critically observe the 
creatures inhabiting the zoo called
Earth, how then does that creator
weigh and balance responsibility
resulting from the inspiration to
imbue its creatures with passion?
The fraught, inexplicable transition
from polarizing extremes like
love and hatred whereby the most
cerebrally gifted of creation's
living experiments adapt life
to the non-existence of death,
a finality expunging life, as
example. Had the creator imagined
that within its divine self only
would the ultimate authority 
of life and death reside? But
then, the creator designed its
creatures to procreate, endowing
them with the capacity to bring
forth new life, and in so doing 
enabling those blighted creatures 
also to destroy lives the benighted
considered unworthy as though
it was they dabbling in the arcane
laboratory of existence, shuffling
stardust, carbon and atoms
about at whimsical dalliance.

Crescent and Scimitar

Humankind has forged great strides
from our primitive distant past
to master the inventive intricacies
of science and modern technology
the forward momentum staggering
in its speed of development and
breadth of utility. Then, and now and
again a reminder that our triumphs
pale in comparison to our primitive
emotions stalling at the tribal
sectarian, chauvinistic primal state
where blood and belonging,
territorial gain, cupidity and deep
sanctimony reign supreme, compelling
those of faint conscience and urges
toward psychopathy to roil the
world in a never-ending riot of 
recrimination, meting out their vision 
of vengeance with the blood-drenched
pitiless righteousness of godliness.

The Glorious Past

Ah, how one pines for days
gone past, when a pioneer spirit
motivated our sturdy predecessors
to embark on long sea voyages to 
newly discovered lands, in escape
from the suffocating poverty and
class struggles of the old land so
grimly abandoned, high expectations
of diligent hard work in land clearing
a beacon of future prosperity. Free,
free at last in a new country beckoning
with its siren song of forests and lakes,
arable land and plentiful game -
and yes, as neighbours, indigenous
people who intimately knew the
land, knew winter cold and survival
techniques. Knew to follow the
wild herds in seasonal migration.
Knew the quality of botanical specimens
as medications, knew constant conflict
with competing tribes, knew they
would have to share access to fishing
and hunting, growing of crops, and
of course, exposure to dire seasonal
elements of climate, disease and
privation; above all, competition
for scarce resource entitlements. All, 
all this and more in the glorious past.

A Casual Encounter

Strolling along a woodland trail
of a winter day encounters though
unexpected do occur and where
before you is a strange but somehow
familiar face, you struggle with
memory to place that nudge of
familiarity, finally conjuring up
the image of a small grey dog with
oddly spiked hair, narrow snout,
horned ears and wild eyes, with the
gentle name of Rachel. And you ask
at greeting before moving on, though 
somehow you know, as a slow smile 
is followed by the affirmation that
the little dog who uncannily resembled 
a werewolf but comported herself
like a romping, friendly puppy, so 
menacingly fierce in appearance that
people shrank back in fearful dismay
at her presence though loved by those 
who knew her and her sweet temperament, 
died four years ago, leaving a deeply sad
vacancy that time has not yet healed.

 

Co-Existence

It is their natural environment
their habitat, into which we
intrude without so much as a
by-your-leave of arrogant
entitlement for we control
all we survey and they are,
after all, only animals of the wild.
Our homes are built where once
they roamed unhampered by our
presence, setting boundaries
through which they may not 
venture for if they do we
designate the nuisance and
threats whose presence must 
be addressed by means foul.
Those creatures have no access
to means by which they may
solve the nuisance and danger
we represent through the
hazards we pose trespassing
on their territory, the homes
that nature has suited them for
and so the tensions of co-existence
favour the bipedal opposed-thumb
animals distressing all others.

 

After The Storm

The storm that raged through
the dark hours of the night
with its howling winds and
an orange ghostly glow
clamped throughout the
forest has spent its fury.
Silence prevails, the wind 
departed, the chastened woods
now pillowed and billowed in
snow, a tranquil transformation.
Creatures of the forest though
remain sequestered and hushed
prey and predators alike, each
unwilling to venture where
nature stormed their haven.

 

The Accursed House

Can a house be cursed? On
this street neighbours have known
each other for decades, good
people or not, and that house has
never subscribed to the social
covenant of being a home, it 
seems, for it has been sold and
serially occupied so many times
each episode culminating in
marriage collapse, with children
undergoing the trauma of confused
loyalties and now, the neighbours
are once again whispering,
confiding, conspiring to compassion
and a shared regret at yet another
replay where discreet shuffling
of absence and presence sees a
distracted mother coping with 
career and children, grandparents
in constant appearance, father of
those children, a ne'er-do-well
dandy is free now to pursue other
interests, though he will pine
for days when life was less
complicated; his children, boys
all three, available for play.


 

 

Wonderland

An all-encompassing hoary 
breath of enchanted white has
enraptured the forest as snow
empties the sky of its glittering
treasure of minute frozen stars.
In the valley of the ravine, a
stream, like a ribbon of dark
isinglass meanders, its banks
fluffed like pillows awaiting
dreamland, inviting all who
wander by to rest, and abide
awhile in nature's wonderland.

 

Winter River

Tardy migrants, geese yet
ride the darkly frigid river,
resistant to the slowly
gathering surface icing
creeping from its contiguity
with the snow-filtered banks
above. The sky a vast pewtered
panorama, snow is in the offing
even as the early winter
afternoon sun glows 
imperiously, insistently yet
in vain through the curtain
of an opaque atmosphere. A 
clutch of crows flies in dark 
silhouette across the arras.

Another Dimension

They come unbidden in the
night, the realities of 
another dimension, the 
existence of which presents
this sleeper with times and
places and the presence of
loved ones as they once were,
not as they now are, still with
this life, but yet in intimate 
context of an earlier life. 
With them are those also who 
belong in the past, but are 
no longer present, but for 
their places, in these my dreams. 
An utter confusion of what
once was and no longer is,
even while I am aware of
these dissonances in that
life and this one, left
bemused, wondering which
one is real, which is not.

 

Winter Dark

The heavens a robin's eggshell
blue, there are no clouds to
challenge the sun's dominance
this winter day. Long filaments
of light wrap around the trunks
of forest trees, illuminating branches
long bared of foliage, as though
defying the day's Arctic chill.
There is a familiar fragrance 
reminiscent of the heralding of
another snowfall, not now, not yet
but an event to be shortly assigned.
An earlier wind of wicked temper
has abated, the glacial atmosphere 
sweetened by the glaring warmth, 
its presence brief, as soon the 
sun recalls its emissaries, preparing 
its nightly absence, surrendering the
landscape to winter dark and cold.

Winter Serenity

Not the merest tug of errant
wind challenges the serenity
of the woods, no rustling of
transparent beige beech,
ironwood or oak foliage
stubbornly clinging to a
core-depleted winter tree
where an opaque white light
transfuses the landscape
awaiting sunset hovering
on the horizon. Snow has
surrendered its icy crust so
hikers' boots sink silent
and deep in the stilled
atmosphere until suddenly
somewhere distant a dog 
rousting woodland creatures 
voices its frenzied joy.

 

The Mourning Dove

It sits there on the rim of a garden
urn, huddling within itself,
small sleek head nestled as though
with the pain of grief, between
the shoulders of its wings. Puffed
with the frigid temperature and
wretched wind, this icy morning
finds the bird alone and unpaired
a mourning dove emulating its
name. Where then is its mate
we wonder. Certainly not one
of the pair beside it daintily and
nonchalantly pecking seed at
the winter avian feeding centre.
Its companions, content with their
lot, heedless of his quiet lament.

Close of Day

An aura of expectation hangs
on the atmosphere, or perhaps
it's only us, yet it seems
as though late afternoon
appears anxious to meet its
appointment with evening, 
too soon transforming from
the white brilliance of a sun
dappled snowy forest to a
long-shadowed, furtive wood.
As the temperature drops 
so too does the sun, hovering
on the horizon catching the
bare-limb canopy to set it afire
but briefly as dusk descends
and the moon assumes her
bright oval throne, and our
boots crunching on the ice
crystals overlaying snow, we
stride the forest pathways
toward home and warmth, 
our little winter-coated dog
trotting companionably beside.

 

The Waning Day

The setting sun banks the
embers of its daytime fire,
torching the near horizon in
a glorious blaze of orange light,
the forest a silhouette of dark
drama in the landscape of 
nightfall. The parting kiss
of the sun, tucking the day into
the silence of a winter night
comforts the arras of faint 
light, as the swiftly gathering 
gloom closes the blinds on 
another day of wind and 
gently falling, clustering snow.

Breaking The Fast

As dawn reaches its early
fingers of tentative light past
the dark sentinels of night,
chickadees make their morning
pilgrimage to our bird feeder,
and a downy woodpecker picks
mightily at the suet cluster
while juncos gather the fallen
seed and a cardinal patiently
awaits his turn at the communal
avian feed. Later, drowsy-headed
squirrels make their querulous
appearance in the cold dawn
hours bypassing the bird feeder
for their very own feeding
pavilion even as a nuthatch
hangs above and the feisty
red squirrel, fierce in its
minuscule authority, arrogates
to itself disciplinary action
over its timorous black and
grey cousins so much larger,
yet so much more passively
submissive among the orderly
slate of welcome daily visitors.

Night Lantern

The day was clear, bright
and cold, bracing as nature
lovers would have it, so
when the winter sun set in the
horizon, dusk was hesitant
to intrude, politely entering
somewhat later than its usual
gallop on an overcast day.
As the gathering dark timidly
sent its message warning that
night waited impatiently
stage left, the most celebrated
presence of the night sky
made entrance, a glorious, cool
illumination defying gloom.