Saturday, February 28, 2015

Winter Elements


















The soft, mouse-grey sky
canopies the landscape
lavishly curvaceous with
buoyant snow from yesterday's
blizzard that brought a
mesmerizing disquietude
to Nature's humble creatures.

An icy chill has asserted
over the land, settling into winter.
The orb of the sun gleams softly,
intermittently casting tender
beams of light to highlight
here and there the track
of a hare, the wingspread
of some night-time hunter.

Malevolently-driven winds
harnessing the weather to
an ultimate degree of dislocated
anarchy prevails. Hurling itself
at all that presume to present
in its imperious path. Now
settled into a moderately
persistent presence.

Groaning, moaning, clacking
forested tree tops. Toppling
snow drifts sitting on tree stumps
like ice cream on their cones,
the bundled snow falling softly
creating a landscape of its very own.
The creek streams silently onward
its banks softened in silver sides.

Fall malingerers are placed
on notice; stay, and surrender
to an unaccustomed harshness
of climate in degrees and ferocity
not been equipped to surmount.
If survival is your goal - take flight!


Friday, February 27, 2015

Casual Encounter

Long past middle age, when
hope for the future generally
subsides into a sighing gloom of
acceptance, it seemed at a cursory
glance that life had been quite
unkind to this man shrunk into
the cavity of himself, shabbily
dressed, canvass shopping bag
in hand, and a blankly confused
look approaching panic on his 
face. He was fumbling in his
coat pocket and so was I, wondering
where that quarter to redeem a
shopping cart at the supermarket
I'd stashed there had gone to.
Need a quarter? asked my wife
of the stranger as a wry smile
gathered momentum on his face.
One for him, another for me. 
He swiftly took possession of a
cart, but those in the lines I tried
were stuck fast. Before moving on
with his prize, the stranger applied
his slender weight to mine to force
separation, then we each nodded,
a good turn done, to get on with
the waiting grocery-gathering.


Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Compelling Winds

The Compelling Winds


















The shy little cousins of the wind - the gentle
zephyr, the breeze, stand by regarding the fully
mature wind with awe. The puissant grandeur
of the wind, its assured and determined mission
against which all of nature's creatures quail,
instructs and guides the breeze and the zephyr,
but they will never be capable of instilling
dread and fear in the pursuit of their assigned
roles within nature's indomitable schemes.

The gentle ones soothe, they cool and refresh,
they are met with calm expectation. Yet
they longingly regard the fearful esteem the
wind's fury elicits in its many fearful guises as
intemperate, fierce, pitiless, bitter, raw,
destructive and unstoppable in its self-tasked
guidance heralding atmospheric change, posing
by degrees as a hurricane, a tornado, a blunt
force blast furnace shielding its ferocious intent
behind innocent sounding names like el nino and
la nina. Snowy blizzards erasing vision and warmth,
torrential rains abetted by howling winds reveal
facets of the weather phenomena so genially
visited upon this Globe by the great Earth Mother.

Wind becomes a co-conspirator with fire,
wreaking havoc on the flora and fauna lest there
remain any doubts who sits at nature's right-hand
side; the sinister by right of conquest and
domineering intent. From the enabling resources
of the environment's firestorms to the sweeping
guidance of ice storms shredding all that stands
before them. Volcanic vapour and fiery ashes
spread far and wide over land, sea and air.
Wind-whipped ocean storms breeding gigantic
vessel-killer waves and deadly land-sweeping
tsunamis; the wind whips, master of all.


Wednesday, February 25, 2015


Angelic Antagonism

It was an uncongenial meeting
one conspicuous, the other
hardly so. One securely nestled
in the arms of its human, the
other comfortable and barely 
seen resting its minuscule body
on the wares. The kitten's home
was the pet shop, to freely
make its way around that
circumscribed world of shelving
piled with pet products, surely
Paradise for the tiny creature,
independent of its more 
robust sibling sharing the haven.
Their security and entitlement
beyond question in their ease
and unconcern at the ongoing
presence of dogs entering and
exiting with their owners. Perhaps
the occasional standoff gave
drama to their lazy, hazy days.
As when the pint-sized kitten
gave notice to the toy poodle
pup that his inquisitiveness
was downright rude which the
resulting hiss-and-arch made 
more than abundantly clear.



Tuesday, February 24, 2015

 

Hope Springs ...

Dawn has become an earlier
riser these days, flooding our
bedroom in shadow-chasing
light penetrating closed eyelids
urging mind and body to be
roused. In my ears, the sound of
birdsong trickling through
closed windows keeping out
late-winter wind-blasts, snow
and icy temperatures.Too soon 
yet for spring's tentative entrance,
yet the emerging colour plumage
of goldfinches and cardinals
excite their springtime musical
repertoire fostering in me the
hope their promise of life's
seasonal renewal is less a dream
than the horizon's hovering reality.



Monday, February 23, 2015

The Time Remembered

A treasure discovered, hours
dedicated on a French-language
radio station to the sublime
music of our youth; the sounds,
the bands, the singers romancing
us in the 50s and 60s when we 
were enraptured in one another's
presence and danced the evening
hours away. And now, a half-century
later, you wrap me in your arms
and move with me, smoothly
and lovingly, to those wonderful
old refrains of love ever-lasting,
our kitchen floor the dance
hall of the time remembered.



Sunday, February 22, 2015

 

Revelation

I really did see it coming,
slowly unfolding, my gradual
transformation from daughter
becoming my own mother. There
she is now, where I thought I
was. But the me I thought I was
appears to have dissolved. I
recognize her quirks and her
mannerisms, her frowns and 
her exhalations, her pains and
her fading presence. All somehow
assembled in my being. Was a
time my nimble fingers 
threaded her needle. When I
read for her the fine print with
careless ease. Even mothered her
late-born last child. Now that
child prepares for his retirement.
And I, regarding the face
confronting me in the mirror
marvel at seeing my mother, but
cannot explain to her enquiring
eye where her daughter is.

 

Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Silence of Snow

















Wind spurts fierce thrusts compelling
the snow to drift languidly and
mound into voluptuous landscapes
while evergreen boughs heavy
with snow release great clumps
themselves springing to height.

Lazy clouds of snow drizzle
the landscape. Falling clumps freckling
the grey sky, shifting clouds to
pleasure the insistent sun. Shafts
of light haze through the forest,
firing the snow to silver crystals.

Through the soft and gentle
stillness, the staccato of a hairy,
red-capped woodpecker. Snow
generously comforts a recently-bereaved
copse of elm, maple and poplar,
naked no longer. Trunks grey,
black and brown stippled
gloriously-blinding white.

Dessicated, bright orange bittersweet
fruit cluster along their vines'
chokehold on prickly Hawthornes.
Their haws shy against the
flamboyance of the others.
The creek drifts clear and tinkling
over gathered fall detritus
now heavily banked in snow.

A raven crosses the undecided sky,
its raucous call shredding the silence
swift body a black arrow true to its mark.
Soon, snow-muted silence regains
its imperious reign.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Snow Imprint

Snow Imprint

















The forest floor, well on its way
to freezing - encouraged, bullied
by impending winter's
dominion over land
and inland waterways...

Those ferocious icy blasts
have brought new, permanent
snow, covering that rigid floor.
Snow flurries pause lazily in
downward spiral toward
winter's certain depths.

Wind whips bare branches.
The scarlet head of a woodpecker
brutalizing the trunk
of an ancient pine, shards flying
reveals a wide, white gap;
the bird rewarded for its
destructive industry.

Clouds catapult their spare
contents with diminishing returns
as an insistent gust sweeps them
imperiously aside to reveal
an azure promise.

Beams of modest brilliance
modified by the season
yet still sufficiently solared
illuminate a child's
luminous snow-angel.


Thursday, February 19, 2015

You

So, yes, when I tell you
on occasion how very grateful
I am that my life and yours
are so deeply intertwined,
that you know me as well as 
I do you, that our shared lives
over the years have given me
comfort, ease and joy, my
voice a pale reflection of the
deep and abiding love I have
for you, never doubt it. You
have been my haven, my
adventure through life,
intriguing and exciting my
admiration of your presence;
of your restless mind absorbing
the mysteries of existence
and what one can make of the
time given us. Your insatiable
quest for knowledge, your
manly courage and empathy
expressed in kindness, not
humility, enrapture me and
captures me in a binding web
of dependence on that without
which my life is a void.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

 

Winter Blues

Not dedicated environmentalists
though we are and always have been
lovers of Nature, we have become
compulsively weather-obsessed, this 
unusual winter. On the other hand, 
winters are often held to be unusual
in their fierce extremes, or moderation,
their stubborn duration when our
patience ebbs helplessly while
the mistress of the elements is
distracted elsewhere, seeming too
lackadaisical for our desperation
over ushering in a tardy Spring
rescue. Oh, we're glad for Vancouver
that the cherry blossoms are blooming
while we are freezing, for this year
even northern White Horse, Yukon is
enjoying a far less severe winter
than we are. And so, we desperately
tune in to weather reports, all of
them mocking our hopes for release
from excess wind, ice and snow.



Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Unthinkable

First, the news breaking in
all media for this man who is
no more after his towering career
failed, to time and age and keen
competition, informing friends,
colleagues and admirers of the
unfortunate discovery, an
unresponsive body. No rescue
possible, only reminiscences
fondly held of a man generous 
with his time, his experience,
his friendship, his willingness
to be needed and to fulfill that need.
At the news, all were devastated,
the dreadful loss of such an
exceptional human being, the
sorrow for themselves, losing
such an invaluable gift to their
lives. He, on the other hand,
saw bleak desolation, a wide, empty
black space sucking him into
its inexorable maw. He, the
source of their comfort, was
simply put, depressed, alone,
abysmally uncomfortable with life.



Monday, February 16, 2015

 

Winter Birds

The morning sun reaches its
golden shafts of light on a
brace of doves resting on our
porch dozing comfortably 
above the seeds scattered
for our avian neighbours who
don't mind sharing with
squirrels also busy foraging
on these cold and windy
days fit for neither man nor
unsheltered beast. Above, at
the feeder pole-high, cardinals,
goldfinches and redpolls
share only between themselves
and so windily, frigidly 
inclement is it that tiny
puffs of air expelled between
cracking sunflower seeds
rise like the spirit within
soon chilled to invisibility.



Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Winter Forest

















The winter forest is an enchanted
glistening landscape of
chilled silence, muffled and
deeply peaceful. Contoured in
its serene season of rest.

A gust creates an ectoplasmic
drift slowly unburdening
a laden spruce bough.
A lone crow leisurely crests
over steep forest spires.

Tiny chickadees flit
among the trees,
a companion nuthatch
minding their order.

The sky's blue canopy
ribboned by evanescently
diffused clouds as lightly
transparent as the snow
below is opaque, fully
blanketing the frozen earth.

Today's languid wind chill
far less urgent, small wildlife
come suddenly awake to a
day of sun and glorious prospects.

Mice and voles burrow deep
under the warm weight of
their enveloping comforter.
Late-season wildflowers
nod their winter-dried heads.

The forest stream lies hushed
and frozen, glinting back
the sun's crystalline shine,
banked with snow drifts.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Shivering Delight


















The sky is generously dimpled and flocked
with layers of silver and white clouds,
nicely scalloped in a prize-winning design.
Nature takes a bow, on this winter day.
Some wag has taken bows of scarlet silk
and appended them to a few of the frozen
forest trees, a fey nod to Christmas-in-the-woods.
The denizens are not particularly amused,
however light the holiday mood, however.

The counterbalancing wind is sharply avid
in its icy probes, hungry to bite bare flesh.
The exquisite pain of its pointed, icy blasts
negating the peaceful beauty of the snow-capped
trees. Atop the dark, unadorned spire of a
long-dead pine sits the black figure of the
forest's cadaver care-taking contingent, its
beady eyes quick to identify interlopers.

Ferocious wind gusts in the upper atmosphere
part the clouds and shafts of sunlight beam
down sweetly on the forest floor, threading
between winter-bare boughs, illuminating the
crystalline snow, glowing generous light without one
scintilla of comforting warmth. Shivering delight.

Friday, February 13, 2015

The Winter Shoveller

It takes brute force to
clear away a day's worth
of storm-accumulated snow,
to free up the area where you
live from packed piles of
icy slush, exercising muscles
and tendons unfamiliar
with the seasonal routine.
Tossing shovels of frozen
moisture, a game the wind
reciprocates until the clearing
is complete and attention turns
to the urgency of restocking
bird feeders, reserving a
handful of seed for careful
deposit within the snow
tunnel giving access during
forage-difficult times to
a tiny grey mouse struggling
like other wildlife to
survive these cruel months.



Thursday, February 12, 2015

Perspective

Life is no bore, events
occur with irritating
regularity to ensure we
remain on alert, frustrated
and resentful, muttering
why me? while wishing
and wondering why other
people's lives are calm and
ordered as they deal with
situations that drive you
to distraction. Then,
miraculously, all is
forgotten when your
companion in life smiles,
enfolds you and recalls
in his comforting voice
the real world you inhabit.



Wednesday, February 11, 2015

 

Frost-Bitten

Silent, this snow-muffled day, 
and stealthy like a viciously prowling
beast, the wind coasts on the icy
air in defiance of the winter sun
blazing the heat of its light wanly
through the forest canopy. 
Nipping and biting with its
scalpel-sharp edge, the wind flays
frozen skin, pain evolving toward 
absence of sensation as living
cells helpless in their own defence
succumb to the deathly onslaught,
a misery of wretched conditions
cold exacerbated by ravening
wind equalling the bite of a frosted
devil gnawing at exposed skin,
the brilliant landscape of snow
luminously lovely, withal.



Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Don't Feed The Dogs!

Don't Feed The Dogs!


It’s become, he thinks wryly, a predictable ritual. He thinks he can get away with sneaking some extra tidbits to the dogs, and sometimes he does get away with it, but more often she snaps at him “Don’t feed the dogs!”. Well, he’s not feeding them, not exactly. He’s demonstrating his fondness for the poor little buggers, surreptitiously reaching under the table while simultaneously appearing to be absorbed in reading his breakfast paper. They wait there, both of them, under the table. They know the game. When he tries to ignore them, after her imperious bark, one of them will nudge him.

It almost makes him feel like a kid again. The way he felt when he was small, when his mother served something disgusting for dinner and he tried to feed the family dog and even the dog wouldn’t touch it. He’d try to secret the stuff beside him on the chair, hoping his mother wouldn’t notice, and when he excused himself later, he’d scoop the goop into his hand and rush into the bathroom with it, to flush it down the toilet. He had convinced himself his mother never knew what he was doing, but he discovered much later she was aware of it, but chose to permit him these little deceits. Satisfied that he would eat some of it, before beginning the disposal ritual.

With his wife it was the same kind of thing. The dogs were overweight, she’d groan, it wasn’t healthy for them. Didn’t he care? Was he looking forward to disposing of them prematurely? Hardly likely; he was as invested in their good health and longevity as she was, just also wanted to treat them now and again. And they knew; they could smell sausages or bacon on the stove of a morning. Pancakes too, they liked those. She had agreed at first that he could chop tiny bits of pancake or sausage or bacon into those little porcelain bowls she used for them. Her mistake. It wasn’t a one-time thing, it became their week-end ritual. And nothing, now, could dissuade them from their expectations.

She was as resigned to it as he was, but she would make him pay for beginning that ritual, now incontrovertibly set in stone. Until the little dogs received the homage due them nothing would budge them from their begging stance under the table. His wife pretended not to see, as though nothing was happening. But that didn’t stop her from snapping at him “Don’t feed the dogs!”

While he read the papers she was immersed in one of her food magazines, flipping the pages, looking at recipes, ogling the colour photographs, enticing enough to make anyone drool. She was devoted to those magazines, fascinated with the recipes, loved the photographs, but did she ever make any of those things for him? Hardly. With him too it was the same thing “Don’t feed the overweight man”. Hardly overweight. Him? Well, hardly. He could lose five pounds, but at his age why bother?

Food magazines in the winter and gardening magazines in the summer months. Poring over the gardens purportedly in someone’s backyard, but hardly likely. They argued over that, too. These were settings, he told her, no one had gardens like that. They were just temporary props, like Hollywood film sets. The purveyors of those magazines well knew that ordinary people didn’t have gardens like that. It was like the fashion magazines with their slim-to-disappearing models wearing designs that would look ridiculous on most people. They looked ridiculous on the models too, but they could get away with it.

Did she listen to him? Never. Just kept turning those pages. And ordering him not to feed the dogs. They weren’t dogs, they were their household companions. If he called them dogs she would snarl at him, demand he speak of them by their names. But her, if she did it that was all right…

She told him the other day about the last telephone conversation with her kid brother. Kind of cut him down to size, she said, the selfish little egotist. Well, sure Kenny was like that, but he was the youngest of her mother’s brood, thirteen years younger than her, in fact. Little wonder he was spoiled, got used to the idea that anything to do with him was important. She would never forgive her little brother for assuming his wife was fine, just fine. When she was reverting steadily to childhood, and neglecting the care of their two infants. And then when she was institutionalized he raised the kids by himself. Kind of. He did marry their day-care provider.

And the kids, as they became adults, had to fend for themselves anyway, because their dad was too busy after all, to give them the attention they needed, and he didn’t feel they were entitled to the support they wanted, so now he’s bitter that they’ve both moved far, far away, both married to losers he didn’t approve of. She just kind of sorted things out, set him straight. Doubtful when he’ll call again to crow about his latest exploits or complain about the latest slings his most recent publication earned him. But that’s the way his sister is. He’ll get over it.

And that’s the way his wife is, he’ll never get over it. She could be pretty devious. Pretend she knows nothing when she knows everything. And in the process catch him with his pants down. Literally - last week-end, as it happened. He has a habit of walking around in the morning in a tee-shirt, fresh out of the shower, and nothing on below. He’d forgotten to roast coffee for breakfast, and because she hated the smell of roasting coffee, he’d taken it into the garage, for the roasting machine to do its thing there.

She also, as it happens, hates it when he wanders around without any underpants or trousers on. Guess his elderly, lean shanks aren’t too sexy, he’d chuckled to himself often enough. When he went into the garage to retrieve the roaster, sans trousers, sans underpants, suddenly the automatic garage door lifted. He could move pretty fast for a 75-year-old, and he did. He couldn’t be certain that no one had seen him revealed in his glorious nakedness, but hoped that to be the case. Could be embarrassing.

Of course she denied she’d done any such thing. So what was he supposed to do, call her a liar? Ask her about that grin plastered all over her face?

He was ordered not to listen to the news in her presence. She deliberately made herself unaware, ignorant of world affairs. She had no intention, she said, of allowing those disgusting things that happened outside her world to invade her consciousness, she had no need of that kind of rude awakening. So if he wanted to listen to news he had to do it as though clandestinely, in his own house. Clearly, being aware of world affairs had become a subversive activity. He felt hemmed in, ignored, put upon.

She was disinterested in his opinion on anything, and never sought it. When he proffered it he was shut down, like an obstreperous kid making a nuisance of itself, trying to get some attention. When she caught him discussing anything with anyone, she would interrupt, make light of what he’d said, inform whomever he had been talking to that he had become tiresomely verbose, and insult his intelligence in front of anyone at all. He thought he would become inured to that kind of deliberately insidious character assassination - from his own wife! - but he wasn’t. It rankled and puzzled him.

Where was that cute little button-nose with that impish grin who had so captivated him? They’d had discussions back then, and they all revolved around their future together. Here was the future and it wasn’t quite what he had envisioned. A companion in old age. A companion he had, but a more reserved, disinterested one couldn’t be imagined. Why did he put up with it?

At night, she still wore the same silky bed garments she had used to when they were young. Once in a little while she would allow him to touch her, but touch was as far as it went. Anything further was ferociously abnormal, disgusting, and he a dirty old man to even harbour any thoughts that she would want to ‘do it’.

Even his daughters seemed to give him short shrift, following their mother’s example, as though he was already entering the state of senility that would certainly soon overcome him completely, rendering him incapable of responding to even the most basic of enquiries. Nothing he said to them seemed to penetrate their consciousness that he was in full possession of all his marbles, that he was well informed and a good source of information on anything. They were as disinterested in his opinions as his wife. They treated him like an old family dog, with the obligatory kiss on forehead.

Not that it was much different with the grandchildren. No boys, all girls, all following in their mothers’, their grandmother’s footsteps, viewing him as an addendum, an odd-fellow-out in a household comprised largely of females. How, he wondered, did his sons-in-law cope? Were they given the same kind of treatment he was now so long accustomed to? Does it creep up so gradually that no one takes notice, until it suddenly looms of such huge importance because everything else has receded, with retirement?

When did his wife enter the hallowed thought-processes of feminism and begin to regard males, himself included, as oppositional oppressors to womankind? Would it have been any different if they’d had sons, instead of daughters?

He had once confronted her with those questions. Or queries approximating those he posed to himself; putting it, he hoped, more delicately, diplomatically, not wanting to risk one of her volatile outbursts of condemnation of all men and him in particular, as clumsy, stupid victimizers of womankind. He’d thought he had given her a good life, inclusive of his care for her and their children.

Her response had been a blank, uncomprehending stare. A shrug. She had turned away from him, muttering something to herself, something he couldn’t quite make out, but the words “idiot” and “impossible” hadn’t escaped him.

His castle was under siege, and he was only latterly fully aware of it, he thought bitterly to himself. Her concerns restricted to the trite and the trivial, they had few common interests. Is there a ‘naturally’ evolving acceptance of lost autonomy that accompanies old age? How long has this decline beset him? He’s just shrugged it off as immaterial to his well-being, while its corrosive effects on his self-esteem had been gradually, inevitably dissolving his character into a ghostly veneer of the opinionated, self-assured man he once was.

Wait a minute, weren’t old codgers like him supposed to “set in their ways”, with the passage of time become insufferably entitled, graduate from solidly opinion-positive to grumbling misanthropes? When had that stealthy role reversal occurred? He, the self-assured principal, she the docile, unquestioning follower?

His attempts to speak with her, to maintain an element of basic human contact had all been shrugged off. What use was he to her, then? What difference if he left? He thought about it, but never deeply enough to consider it an escape route. What would he be escaping toward? A lonely, isolated life, with a few friends whom he might see on the rare occasion? Discounting those who'd already kicked off, he thought dourly.

He wasn’t a joiner, didn’t belong to any clubs, had been content with his work, his family, his hobbies. Never envisioning a time in the future when the first would be gone, and the rest would somehow slip beyond his grasp.

Nothing seemed to interest him any more, other than the currency of the news. It was what held him to the present, what piqued his interest, while irritating his wife who felt he should have better things to do with his time and his brain. His suggestions that they go somewhere together, find a common interest fell on deaf ears. She had her interests, she was busy and engaged - in things that held no interest whatever for him. And even if they did, she would disallow his ‘interference’ in her sphere.

He had begun lately, imagining himself living in a dingy, low-rent single room somewhere, cooking out of a two-burner portable stove, shuffling off to the nearest grocery store for supplies, reading his daily newspapers, going off for daily walks. She’d never allow him to take the dogs. They were hers, although they were theirs. He would have nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The thought that emanated from his right shoulder into his ear and his consciousness said “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Its companion, sitting on his left shoulder whispered in response that he had nothing to lose, yet would gain nothing. He had outlived his usefulness, become expendable. He groaned softly, hot tears of regret beginning to form.

A soft hand fell on his shoulder. Warm lips nuzzled the back of his neck, moved to the top of his head. “What’re you thinking, dear?”

Monday, February 9, 2015

Boredom's a Bastard

Boredom's a Bastard

She was bored. Achingly, mind-numbingly bored. Boredom had been her companion in place of any other. Boredom greeted her as casually as her husband once did, as she rose from her bed in the morning. It had its coffee companionably with her, followed her to work, and came back home with her at night. The most faithful companion she could ever imagine. It never lied to her, encouraged her, disparaged her, or evaded her.

But it did drive her to the same kind of despair she had experienced when she'd had her affair - once she realized her husband was doing the same. That despair over the unfairness of it all. Him leaving her in utter contempt, simply for doing what he had.

Her boredom is all-encompassing. However, she does not live alone with her boredom. Her 15-year-old daughter, busy with high school, her friends, and everything that entertains and inspires and brings delight to the morose mind of a teen-age girl, lives with her. Unlike her younger brother, she has never forgiven her father for leaving them. Mostly because, as she said, her mother’s incessant moody fatigues and lectures about the untrustworthiness of men drove both her and her brother to distraction. It was not exactly fun for them, living with their mother. Still, she refused to even see her father, acknowledge his existence. Her mother had succeeded in at least instilling that level of defiance and anger in her daughter.

She herself never sees him. She hasn’t ever once confronted him, looked him in the face, spoken with him over the last seven years that saw them first separated, then finally divorced. If he calls, to speak with their son, she listens mutely, puts down the receiver and calls her son to the telephone. She never says “it’s your father calling”, she says instead “someone wants to speak with you”.

Her son, now that he’s thirteen, spends week-ends with his father. Her family tells her that’s the best thing, that he needs to be around his father, pattern himself after a man, have a man’s influence in his life, to grow up normally. Although she bitterly resents this, she is resigned to it.

She tries not to dwell on the thought of her son accepting his father’s second wife, her replacement. Although she wasn’t certain, she felt her ex-husband’s new wife was likely one of those easily-laid women he’d been with while married to her. Her son says not so much of a word about either his father or his step-mother. He knows his mother has no wish to hear anything unless it is to condemn either of them, and that he would not do. He had said, at first, that his father’s new wife was OK, didn’t bug him. Obviously then, her ex-husband wasn’t bored. She really, truly resented that, the bastard.

He didn’t have to leave her. He could have said to her that he understood how it was, how his philandering had led her to do precisely what he was doing. But he wouldn’t admit it. He refused, adamantly, to say he had started it, that it was his sleeping around with other women that initiated her into the possibility of sticking it to him by doing the same.

“You’ve no proof” he said. “What you have is a dirty little mind, accusing me of sleeping around.”

“Right! I’ve got the dirty little mind, have I? You’re not nearly as clever as you think, mister. I’ve had reports back from mutual friends that you’ve been seen in pretty compromising situations.”

“Gossip? You depend on gossip about me to take it as proof positive that I’ve done those things?”

“Damn right, bud. I have it on the best authority. Augmented, I should add, by little clues I’ve picked up on my very own.”

“Clues? Madam Holmes, you picked up clues?”

“You’ve been too sloppy with some of your credit card charges. I’ve seen them. I can put two and two together. I never received any gifts from you from the places on that detailed listing.”

“That’s it? That’s the extent of your ‘proof’?”

“No, no it isn’t. Don’t you think even from a male perspective that it’s odd a man chooses not to have sex with his wife over a period of months at a time? Am I supposed to think that’s normal? Or might I somehow deduce that it’s normal for someone who’s getting off somewhere else?”

“Yes, you do have a mind in the gutter. I don’t have to explain, and I won’t. If you wondered you could have come directly to me to discuss any concerns you might have had. You might have been surprised at the answers.”

She was no fool, and she knew what she knew. It was indisputable. He didn’t have the kind of job that required working late nights, nor week-end trips. And suddenly there it was, his professional life requiring both those elements, with nothing but the most casual explanation from him.

In the end everything worked out to favour him, not her. They’d split everything, the proceeds from the sale of the house, the furnishings, everything. She might have looked for another house, but she decided to rent an apartment, instead. She did, though, move as far from their old neighbourhood as possible. No wish to see their old neighbours, suffer their pitying looks; try to overlook the awkwardness. Anyway, she never did like that neighbourhood, it was his choice, not hers.

And then to discover, once she was settled with the kids in their new home that he had decided to rent nearby as well. It was infuriating. She always feared, going out, that she would run into him. Worse, coming across his new wife, even not knowing who she was, what she looked like. She would have the advantage on her; likely recognizing her from a family photograph. It was too much to bear. She hated him with a grinding passion.

Which did nothing whatever to relieve her constant state of boredom. And the two companion emotions, depression and loneliness. She deserved better. The man she’d had that affair with thought so too. He had offered to pay for her apartment. Of course that came with a price. He would also have a key. And that was just too awkward, even if the kids were seven years younger, back then. Unlike her husband he had no intention of leaving his wife. He no longer loved her, he said, but he felt responsible for her, felt pity for her, for her compromised health condition.

“You said you love me” she wheedled him.

“It’s true, I said it, I meant it” he retorted, after one of their many heated discussions, when she had tried to patch the hole in her life by convincing him that he should leave his wife and marry her.

“You love me”, she said scathingly, “but not quite enough to want to live with me. Instead you’re happy living with a woman whom you no longer love, and you won’t commit to me. That’s your idea of love?”

“No, no it isn’t, but you’ve got to understand, she has no one else, she needs to be cared for, and I have that responsibility.”

“What about me?” she'd wailed, despairingly, when he would not be moved to her argument. “What about me? I’ve lost my husband because of you, and now I have nothing.”

“You can still have me” he said quietly.

“I won’t agree to those terms” she said sharply. “I won’t be a kept woman, living in an apartment you pay for, worrying about my kids getting screwed up, seeing some guy they don’t know hanging around, waiting for his intimate opportunities as soon as their heads hit the pillow. How long could people keep up that kind of relationship anyway?”

“You’re right” he finally allowed. Said he was sorry. Sorry about everything. About both of them succumbing to the relationship they had developed, each of them covertly and deliberately enjoying the thrill of illicit sex and misleading their spouses. It was no way to live. And she was right about that. Still, he would not leave his wife. And that left only one alternative.

And so they parted. It was far easier for her to part with him than with her husband. It was the idea of it; one relationship carnal and infused with the excitement of the forbidden, the other comforting in its implied social and relational security, infuriating though her husband’s stealthy forays for sex outside their home was. It seemed important at the time, and far less so as time widened the distance between the reality of her discovery and her resultant rage, and what she now experienced, a great yawning distance of boredom.

She’d given a lot of thought to the barrenness of her social life, her lack of intimacy with anyone. Confided in one of the women she worked most closely with that she had decided to start an Internet-based dating service. Her friend observed that there seemed to be a lot of those around; why did she think she might be successful in starting up yet another one?

It was, she responded, her experience with being single, with being deprived of a life-mate, of a partner in life, that made her perfect for such an enterprise. She would bring to it a deep understanding of the trauma that people suffer after relationship separations. She knew from her very own experience how difficult it was to initiate new relationships, to discover others who shared similar interests, had like values, desperately wanted to find a companion. She could easily be a leader, someone to whom others could confide their disappointments and look to for guidance. Her explanation sounded entirely rational and impressed her friend no end.

Who offered a name for such a dating service. “Call it Lilith Garden”, she said. She had considered something like “Adam and Eve”, but then discovered that name had been taken. There were other possibilities, names including the word “Paradise”, that kind of thing, but when she did her Googling homework she always discovered those names had been taken. No one had co-opted Lilith, and she decided that made sense. She had someone help her with the artwork, and putting together a Web page, and couldn’t believe the number of people who responded, emailed her, eager to join her new group. The charge, she thought, was fairly modest; she had done her homework.

It was amazing how it lifted her spirits, brought her out of herself, to communicate with all these people. Lonely, like her, desperately looking for a companion, tired of looking in places where no one ever turned up but losers. Like themselves, though they never said that. She was generous in giving out advice, and people were eager to know what she had to say, they sought out her opinion. After all, she was running this greet-and-date operation, she had to know things that eluded them. She began matching people up according to their stated values, their tastes, their interests, their backgrounds. And encouraged them, when initial impressions didn’t match their anticipated longings, to be patient, give it a try, dig a little deeper into themselves to find a more co-operative spirit. In the short few months since she had launched her little enterprise she became a different person.

She felt alive again, fascinated by what she had begun, happy to act as a social chaperone, introducing people, encouraging them. She more than earned that money she extracted from her clients, she felt. They needed her, and she was happy to accommodate that need. She was less than thrilled when, on a few occasions, disgruntled clients blamed her for a series of unfortunate couplings when things most certainly did not turn out they way they even modestly hoped for. But that, she emphasized to them, sagely, was what life was like, wasn’t it? You had to take some chances, and your lumps along with them, to find in the end what you really wanted. And guess what? She archly said to them, it works, you’ll find the one you’re aching for, they’re there, you just have to keep on trying.

After another month or so she became acutely discouraged. It just seemed to flood over her all at once, as it were. One day she was alert and enthusiastic and everyone’s mentor, the next she was completely deflated, demoralized again, wondering what on earth she was doing. Finally admitting to herself she really had no idea what she was doing, playing around with peoples’ lives, encouraging them, pushing them toward a future that had no guarantees and, admittedly, most often no promise of success in discovering that coveted pot of gold at the end of their desperate social lives devoid of contact, of meaning.

Because, in fact, that was precisely where she was stuck. Mired in a life without satisfaction to her, without meaningful contact, a relationship with another person to whom she could devote herself, and who, in the end, would find her enchanting, desirable, who would cherish her.

She had lapsed back to the beginning of her intolerable, prolonged courtship with misery. And it was eating her up with anger, bitterness and utter dejection. Her children had no idea why their mother became once again that harridan that kept plaguing them with her objections to whatever it was they wanted to do.

Her friend at work hinted that perhaps she’d bit off more than she could manage, with her dating service. It was dragging on her, convulsing her own emotions with its incessant demands.

She agreed. She felt she could no longer continue the sham. She sent out a long emailed message to all of her subscribers, admitting that she simply wasn’t fit for the task of guiding them any longer. She realized, she said, that she was disappointing them all, but she emphasized that she was as greatly disappointed in her surrender to this defeat, as they would be. She had appreciated that they needed someone to lean on, and she thought she was strong enough to help them all, because she really, really cared about them. And, she said, she was prepared, to fully reimburse to any who were interested in making such a claim, that portion of their unused monthly dues that fell into the time-frame of the suspension of Lilith’s Garden's dating service.

People upbraided her through a series of emails, accused her of trifling with their lives, told her they detested her, that she was an egotistical user of people. It wasn’t the money, they argued, it was the trust they had placed in her, and she had never had the slightest intention of honouring that trust. They would never forgive her. Some threatened to take her to court, and she worried immensely about that, but it never did materialize. She emptied her bank account, grown so nicely over that six-month period, in reimbursing all the people who demanded their money back. Surrendering those funds did nothing to ingratiate her with those who now considered her a pariah, a social monster who took pleasure in manipulating other peoples’ tender emotions.

Finally, in worse emotional shape than ever, there was a telephone call. The voice sounded familiar but her mind was completely blank. It’s me, he said. Me? Who the hell was me? Frank. Frank?

“How are you?”

“Fine, I was just wondering how you are. I’ve missed you. You’ve no idea how much.”

Really? How good to hear from you. I hardly recognized your voice, it’s been so long.”

“Yes, it has been. But you know, I thought of you constantly through the years. I haven’t been able to put you out of my mind. I recall all those good times we had together. I’d like to see you.”

“You would? Well, I suppose that could be arranged….”

She felt ecstatic, suddenly her boredom dissipated, she felt anticipatory, gloriously happy. Unaccountably happy, in fact, since this was a call from someone she'd scarcely given much thought to, over the years. Now, hearing his voice, she too thought back to the times they’d had. She contrived to recall those times as exciting, pleasurable, meaningful. Pushing back another memory of demeaningly covert meetings, guilt, and in the end, a bitter parting.

At work next day she told her friend all about the call, about the invitation, the yearning both had to see one another again. She knew, she confided, that if she agreed to meet, they would end having sex. She wondered, she threw out casually at her friend, if it would be worth it. She was dying to see the guy, he’d been really good-looking, skilled at love-making, said all the right things, bought her wonderful gifts, made her feel really special.

Well, responded her friend carefully, what’ve you got to lose? This, from a woman who actually felt scandalized by these revelations, who would never herself ever consider such an assignation. Of course this woman was sturdily, safely married, she could afford to spurn an opportunity for a little imaginative fun. She wasn’t lonely, bored, bitter. These thoughts running through her mind, she upbraided herself for thinking of her standards, not her friend's obvious need to be encouraged, to go ahead with what she most obviously wanted to do. It just puzzled her that her advice would be sought, under the circumstances. So she simply repeated, why not, what had she got to lose?

So, it was done. They met, they had sex, they parted. Meeting one another after that seven-year gap was interesting. Amazing how seven years could alter someone’s physical appearance. He wasn’t so handsome, after all. Sexy, well not so much, why did she remember him like that? But he did relay to her some interesting information. His wife had died. Of natural causes, due to her medical condition, and he was now single. After relaying that information there was an awkward pause; neither had much to add, other than her “sorry to hear that”.

And the sex, well it wasn’t anything, in fact. She had shopped beforehand, bought slinky black underwear, imagined the sensuous delight of allowing him to undress her, fondle her, speak of his urgency. That was what had happened years ago, wasn’t it? So much a part of his appeal to her? Well, all that happened, and big deal. She could tell he felt as awkward as she did, throughout the evening they spent together. Dinner was nice, the flowers he brought along very nice, but what the hell was she supposed to do with them?

Checking into the hotel was not very nice. She didn’t enjoy that. It had lost its appeal, that mysterious, mischievous frisson of pleasure mixed with social guilt that had shot through her when they’d done that, repeatedly, years ago. It had heightened the pleasure they both extracted from their furtive meetings; their frantic, exuberant, sex.

She was glad when the evening was finally over, when they parted, each awkwardly promising to keep in touch. Neither had any such intention.

Remarkably, afterward, she no longer felt bored, restless, miserable. She felt … all right.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

 

Snowbound

Ever so briefly - did it really
happen? the pewter curtain
of the sky parted and the sun
darted into the breach, illuminating
the dreary day and the wide river
roiled and steely grey, whitecaps
telling tales of the rapids beyond
winter-frozen banks, the broad
sweep of ice, its winter-portable
fishing huts, the view as of a
19th-Century colony posed
on the far shore, soft white
columns of exhaust rising from
industrial chimneys, then the
curtain abruptly as it parted,
closing, clusters of densely packed
snow winking their voyage from
sky to land, muffling sound and
form in humped white beaches
swaddling the landscape.



Saturday, February 7, 2015

 

Transformed

Black-masked marauders, they
excel at savaging their
environment, nothing safe
from their teeth and talons,
stripping and ripping all
they survey, two small but
ferociously wild hooligans,
one forever challenging the
other in a conjoined crusade
to destroy whatever can be
perceived as a device to
contain their enthusiasms
gone amok, leaving a trail
of objects in forlorn disarray
of ruined parts, shredded
with the delight of carnivores
set free to wreak whatever
disasters fall prey to their
impulses. Until relief arrives
as the creatures wild with the
discovery of existence collapse
in a puzzled, weary heap of
self-induced exhaustion,
angelically transformed.



Friday, February 6, 2015

 

Blue-Sky Snow

Surely Nature has confused her
cues, mislaid her complex weather
blueprints and resorted to the
impulse to spontaneous reaction
forgetting that cloudless skies of
blue shimmering in the bold
golden light of a winter sun 
absolves the atmosphere of its
obligation to blanket the landscape
with an opaque veil of gently
descending snow, glinting and
shimmering, a gift from the sky
to the Earth below, muffling
the confusion of voices
questioning the wind and the air
at this caprice where biting cold
and flawless blue conspire to
produce the unlikely prospect of 
a defiantly snow-filled day.



Thursday, February 5, 2015

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

If there is any vestigial compassion
nor shred of humanity in a
tribal mentality it rarely extends
beyond the clan in Middle Eastern
as in Medieval society. Perceived
slights to the creed of Islam, a
religion whose founder purloined
ideas and myths from previously
established religions of less
savage heritage instantly thrusts
its furious followers to the brink of
inchoate rage and beyond, prepared
to inflict death upon blasphemous
aggressors. The pious devoted
embark on a lifetime of servitude
to their pathologized instinct to
inflict pain on deserving non-believers
seeking first to enlist them as recruits
surrendering their souls to Allah
then proceeding on to the
obligation of the faithful to jihad,
instructing the faithless in the
many phases of Islam; surrender
to conquest. The genetic code of
the Middle East extending into
North Africa steeped in the ancient
instinct of visceral vengeance
codified as sacred within the most
primitive of tribal religions chaining 
adherents to a lifetime of insular 
aloofness, distrust and hatred of 
others and struggle against the dire
threat of somehow becoming infected 
by civilizational enlightenment.