No Bite, Just Bark

There are two of them, twin 
mischief; this sizeable house
barely able to contain their antics
their racing rampages up and down
and all around, their challenging
jousts, their breakneck speed
teasing and tousling, two non-stop
motion-madness creatures whose
frenetic energy comes packed in
size small. Do they seek out new
challenges in an excess of hubris
viewing other dogs as unwelcome
contenders to their monopoly on
territory accessible to all? Must
be, as their predictably excited 
greeting leave large dogs puzzled
at the audible and visual racket
that emanates from a duo of
black mobilized fuzzballs, so
brave they flee in terror when
those same large dogs approach
too close for their shrinking comfort
and they hide pitiably behind us.

This Is His Life

First-generation immigrants 
from a traditionally patriarchal
society it always amazed me that
she was the household earner, and
he, assailed by a succession of
maladies, only sporadically held
a job. In the quarter-century we
have been neighbours, they have
been our friends, a comfortable fit
in values and concerns with the
inevitable exceptions of origin
and tradition. We've witnessed
their toddlers grown to adulthood
toward their separate futures. The
woman whose exotic beauty
left me speechless hides somewhere
deep within a now-familiar older
version. The man whose travails
we knew intimately, now long a
homebody and never short on
capably handling home affairs
moves in and out of the black gloom
of depression, lifted at intimate
encounters. That much and more
I can understand. He whiles away
time in a manner that confounds my
understanding. No curiosity to be
quelled and satisfied by reading,
not a newspaper, nor a journal. There
are no books that have yet piqued
his interest. His reading skills and
interests start and stop with the
household bills. And I think to
myself: how utterly mind-desolate,
how sad, how bereft of value.
Is this a quality life well-lived?

The Devil's Handyman

The Devil's Handyman

“We found some abandoned water cans but no signs of the missing children. As dark was coming down, I tasked the Tunisians to extend the search higher up the volcano the next morning and returned to Kigali to try to quiet flying rumours.
The Tunisians found the children the next day. They had all been murdered except for one young girl, who my soldiers carried to a nearby hospital. I dispatched Brent, another officer and a local translator to the site. After a long drive and foot march, they came to the place where a boy of eight and five girls between six and fourteen had been strangled to death. Deep violet rope burns cut into their necks. All of them had also suffered head wounds and the girls had clearly been gang-raped before they were murdered.” Lt.Gen. Romeo Dallaire: Shake Hands With The Devil

At night they lay together in silent communion, his body cupped around hers, comforting her. She could feel the heat of his body enveloping her, slowly thawing the misery that held her so tightly in its grasp, so all-encompassing at times that she wondered she could still breathe and compel her body to obey her brain’s signals, for she felt her brain to be utterly wasted by despair.

“Don’t, Love”, he said to her. “There will be other times. This happens to everyone. Some women don’t even know they’re carrying. It’s just that you’ve always been so well attuned to your body. It just didn’t take. It’s nature’s way”, he said, softly wiping her tear-stained cheeks. “Next time it will be different.”

He should know, he was a medical doctor, even if his speciality was not gynaecology.

He had been so concerned for her that he’d taken the trouble to call in a colleague to cover for him in the hospital clinic. He’d stayed home with her for the remainder of the week. Cradling her, telling her that she would recover. They would try again. They would succeed.

He wanted children, she knew, just as much as she did. They had always planned on having children. During that bleak time she was reminded of just how much she loved him. She depended so heavily upon him to counter her black thoughts of barrenness. He had laughed softly when she’d fearfully brought to light that fear. Told her to trust his professional knowledge. She would bear them as many children as they wanted, eventually.

They had held off for years, because the time wasn’t quite right, despite both their wishes to begin a family. And finally when the time seemed right, this happened. It certainly wasn’t because she hadn’t taken adequate care. They were beside themselves at the certain knowledge she was carrying their first child. His tender treatment of her, his loving concern was not lost on her. She returned that love, anxious to produce what they both wanted, knowing they would cherish their child and all the others that would follow, giving them all the emotional support and loving direction that children needed.

First aware of the pregnancy, he had assured her she could continue working if she really wanted to. On the other hand, both he and she had no intention of her doing anything but staying at home, looking after their eventual brood. No one other than herself would care for her children, their children. She would entrust them to no one’s care other than her own. And he had agreed.

There was nothing new about this. They had been married long enough to know one another at the most intimate level of introspection, each sharing the other’s values. He was, she conceded, far more emotionally stable than she was, and he gave her the balance her life required. Without him she would be unable to function as a capable, self-assured human being, she was convinced. She had once proffered that thought to him and he had denied that to be the case. She fulfilled his needs as much as she felt he did hers, he assured her, but this did not translate to utter dependence. She was as capable as he was of finding solutions to their inadequacies left to her own devices. She denied that, hugged him fiercely and murmured to him that he was her salvation.

But something seemed not quite right, afterward. She became shy of physical intimacy beyond sleeping together in one another’s embrace. Their love-making became constrained. He kept telling her to relax, to be less restrained, to remember how it had always been between them. Then he introduced a technique that shocked her at first, but at the same time she found titillating, and it seemed to work. They would both leaf through a pornographic magazine and she found herself becoming heated with the physical pull of his presence, and then their sex became wildly successful. She slept far more peacefully, then, felt less need to snuggle into him for comfort.

They enjoyed wild, abandoned sex of a kind she would never have been able to imagine. She was in a continual state of arousal, it seemed to her, and she relaxed right into the excitement of it. He was pleased, and urged her to look at the magazines even when he wasn’t around. It was good therapy, he said. Forget all about the usual social constraints; such publications had their legitimate use. Wasn’t she aware that most couples used these things to achieve better, more satisfying sex lives? Take it from him, he knew. So many of his patients confided in him. All she had to do was look at the improvement in their own sex lives, right?

She conceded that, readily, happy with the transformation that had taken place within her. Until, as though a curtain had abruptly come down on a play she had been observing, she took a sudden revulsion to the very thought of those magazines and the orgiastic display of abandoned sex they portrayed. It was sordid in her view now, and she wanted nothing more to do with them. Nor with the kind of demented, as she now viewed it, sex they had been engaging in. she felt repulsed, ashamed, filthy. He was nonplussed. And as she withdrew from what had become an almost-nightly ritual, he too withdrew, becoming quietly closed away into himself.

And then, she discovered she was pregnant. He was ecstatic, reflecting her own reaction, hugged her compulsively, almost threw her into the air in celebration. Then sobered, and took account of the physical excess and was satisfied to just sit there, smitten with her, with her new condition, with their suddenly burgeoning future as parents. They both felt completely confident that absolutely nothing would go wrong this time. There would be no other miscarriage. She would carry to full term, they would finally start their family.

She wanted, she needed to have - she told him in an excess of exuberance she recognized as a triumph over her earlier worries of being unable to conceive - at least four children, like her older sister. He hugged her, nuzzled his face into hers.

“That sounds manageable“, he said finally, standing back, grinning at her.

She groaned inwardly at the fullness of her content. She absolutely adored her uxorious, child-loving husband. He was incomparable, the best companion in the world, the most empathetic, understanding, sweet-natured and kind person she had ever been privileged to know. She was blessed. Life was good, nature had been excessively kind to her. She vowed to be a better person than she was. She owed it to him, to their children yet to be born.

“Four kids sounds ideal”, he repeated, beaming at her. “Wouldn’t be any problem sending them all to university!” he laughed uproariously, pleased with himself. And she, enormously pleased with him, laughed right along. That evening they talked quietly, but with an undercurrent of excitement, about the future. Their future with their soon-to-be brood. And about time. Although that was her thought; he intimated no such thing. He was patient to a fault, she thought, happily.

They were really, truly happy. And she felt a kind of confidence she had never before experienced. Which proved to be short-lived when she suddenly realized a few weeks later that, unlike his usual self, he hadn’t made any physical overtures to her. Nothing, apart from smiles and pecks on the cheek. No languorous kisses they always had engaged in, preliminary to sex.

Even though she admitted to herself her sex drive had plummeted, she was prepared, concerned with his physical well-being, to accommodate him. But he made no overtures, no effort to have sex again. Not since she had rejected their old routine of using pornography for arousal. She felt guilty, that she had deliberately deprived him of a deep pleasure, and herself as well. But nothing she could say to change all that occurred to her now. She thought to herself she would allow him time to re-engage. She simply waited for him to come around.

But he didn’t, he expressed not even a hint of interest in sex. This perplexed and worried her. On the one hand they were both happy about her pregnancy. And she glowed with pleasure at the very thought of giving birth to a child they would raise together, love and support in every conceivable way. And then, on the other hand, there was her beloved - oddly withdrawn physically, albeit not emotionally.

She cudgelled her mind trying to find answers within herself, but came up empty. And then, although she always had the option of directly asking him, since they had always had a very open relationship, keeping lines of communication open, she shrugged that off, and decided to just let it go. Things would resolve themselves.

And then things changed again. She had been reading a book, a first-hand account of the genocidal war in Rwanda. She had been curious, becoming aware of the Darfur conflagration in Sudan, and wanted to try to understand what would drive human beings to perpetrate such horrendous acts of cruelty on one another. She had long owned the book, but had put it away, always meaning to read it. She’d actually forgotten it on the bookshelf, then re-discovered its existence, and began to read.

She did not, in fact, manage to get much beyond the first hundred pages. At one juncture she had read enough, could go no further, her heart palpitating in actual pain at what she had read. It was just simply impossible, she told herself, that such horribly sordid and cruel things could happen to children. Barely out of infancy, rising through childhood in desperately poor places of the world, only to fall victim to unspeakable atrocities. She wept and she railed, she felt utterly disconsolate, and spoke to him at the first opportunity of her misery.

She felt herself falling into the depths of depression that she knew would, if she did not speak of it to someone else, envelop her and tamp down her ease in carrying their child. She knew very well what depression could do, how it overtook the psyche, plunged the very soul into a deep, dark, hollow, suffocating place of misery. How it put the sufferer in a very private, deep dark place of overwhelming despair. She was herself a clinician, dealt with people who suffered grievously from that devilish condition, and knew that she was as vulnerable as anyone else in society.

As usual, he rescued her, brought her out of that inner grief, not even questioning why she might feel so afflicted about something that had occurred decades ago, in a far-off deeply-deprived country experiencing a horrendous civil war.

“Look, be reasonable”, he said quietly. “There is just so much that can be done in areas of the world that are tribal and primitive in their customs. These are not advanced societies. You know that we try to do what we can to alleviate the strains among ethnic groups gearing toward war, as civilized societies, through the UN, NATO, NGOs.”

“I can’t bear it!“, she sobbed, inconsolably, “I think about young children, about my sister’s kids, about the baby we’ll be raising, and then I think about these horrendous things. How is it even remotely possible that human beings can do these things to children!”

“Well”, he said slowly, “Consider the source. Civilized communities don’t do these things. These are Africans, tribal, clannish people whose minds and values have not gone far beyond the miserable, primitive world they've always inhabited. In a sense, it’s what you can expect from them. They’re totally absent of empathy, of morals, of a decent value system.”

She accepted that from him. She wanted to believe that such things could happen, and could happen only there, in dark, primeval Africa. It took the atrocity she read of out of the realm of civilized human norms, and in a peculiar way assured her that her child would be growing up in a world in which safety and security, respect and decency were assured. She accepted that because it was a soothing balm, and served to pacify her. He comforted her as he always did, drawing her into his strong, protective arms.

She thrust all thoughts of what she had read out of her mind. She refused to read newspapers. She knew in her innermost being that child-predators existed everywhere. That knowledge assumed huge, suffocating proportions in her mind, until her husband assured her in the way he was skilled at. She tamped down any further thoughts, expelled them from memory, exiled them from her knowledge files, and went on her with her life.

And then, a little worm of suspicion began to gnaw at her. After all this time, still no sex. She would have been content enough to let it go; she felt little urge to make love at this juncture, even if she hadn’t yet begun to evidence physical signs of pregnancy.

But he was such a sexually-charged man, she could not help but wonder what was happening? She began to suspect that he was satisfying himself somewhere else, with someone else, and she wanted to know. She couldn’t ask him, he would be appalled at the very suggestion he would do such a thing. Either because he had not and his reaction would be authentic, or because he was surreptitiously finding release in sex elsewhere.

And she thought she had a right to know. She wanted to know. She would not approach him to insult him with the charge of being unfaithful. She had no evidence. There was her intuition, certainly, but there was every possibility she could be wrong. She wanted to be wrong. She wanted to believe that his sex drive had simply plummeted just as hers had. But she found that bordering on the impossible for her to believe. There had to be a logical explanation. And logic told her that because he was not having sex with her he was finding it somewhere else.

She steamed about that conundrum for a while, wondering what she could do, how she might discreetly find clues that might clear up the mystery. She went through the mail, found nothing there. Snuck peeks at his cellphone but that didn’t enlighten her. Went into his files on his computer, because she knew he didn’t use a password, but found nothing there, either. And berated herself for being an evil-minded suspicious harridan. Had pregnancy done this to her? What on earth was the matter with her?

But stop she could not. She regarded him, speaking with her, doing things around the house. He was handsome, young, virile, highly intelligent. She was the most fortunate woman on the planet, she told herself. He was loving, compassionate, kind and wryly amusing. She loved his clever wit, the way he could use irony to excellent advantage.

One day he inadvertently left his notebook at home. She called him, asked if she should drive it over for him, knew how much he used it. He laughed, said not at all, he’d use one there, just transfer the data to his own later on. Something held her back from turning it on. Finally, she submitted to her urge, to sneak into his mind through what she might find on his notebook.

It took a while, but she finally found what at first she thought might solve the questions that had been burning in her mind. But no, it was just a video he’d taken, she guessed, of one of his little patients. She thought she recognized part of the interior of one of the hospital operating rooms. She did see a vaguely-filmed figure in green scrubs. And she thought why isn’t that child anaesthetized if it’s undergoing a surgical procedure?

The anguished cries of a child in distress were loud and unnerving; she turned the sound off. Then watched, mesmerized, saw the figure, back to the camera, head obscured by the limitations of the frame, then as the camera moved closer in and began to focus on the infant concentrated her attention there….

It was hideously repulsive, and soon enough clear that this was no surgical procedure. This was some sadist - clearly a sexually-depraved lunatic - deriving pleasure from torturing a child.

Later, after controlling her gorge, after what she had seen had coalesced into the realization that there was much more than had met her eye yet to be revealed, she closed the notebook, and dialled her sister’s number.

She related to her sister what she had seen, her voice hollow. There was a prolonged silence, then she heard her sister’s uncompromising voice: “You know what you have to do. Pack a bag, and come here directly you’ve reported it.”

She heard her voice, dully, mechanically, agreeing.

“Are you okay?” her sister asked. “Want me to come along and fetch you?”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I’ll be just fine” she said.

Perception Is Reality

Was there ever yet such a
dreary day? Oh yes, of course,
only yesterday, when too the heavens
frowned upon us, releasing a 
relentless spray of November-chilled
rain, the spigot never once pausing
but to increase the measure and
with it our discomfort. The petty
malaise such malign weather
heaps upon us leaving crotchety
bones creaking and minds asleep
in the crepuscular light elicits
in us pity for wildlife huddling
for scant shelter. The birds seek
comfort in trees and shrubbery
nearby the garden birdfeeder
risking desperate dashes for seeds
and the squirrels, always daft
with territorial urges look grumpily
limp and forlorn. Or is that
merely my impression transferred
from my mind to my vision?

Peaceable Kingdom

They are exceptional, those
avian messengers of peace.
Tranquility is their serene nature
inoffensive, wholesomely meek
their very presence soothes.
Even the sound their wings emit
ascending and descending reminds
one of otherworldly creatures for
they are the angels of the bird
world, sweetly mystical
undemanding, humbly foraging
below, never from an exalted
height attracting other birds.
Quarrelsome, impudent
squirrels take no measures to
challenge the presence of those
pearly-grey-and-pink visitors
plumped for comfort from
inclement weather, and nor do
the doves take to panicked flight
in the close and intimate 
presence of other, flighty birds
but remain placidly in place
trusting that peace shall prevail.

Congenial Caring

It's a rare gift, one that in its 
simplicity and perseverance
represents a treasure to those
in need of empathy and the 
opportunity to speak of what is
so troubling to them. The patience
it takes to listen without unnecessary
comments, to unwaveringly devote
attention and the priceless element
of time denotes compassion however
unexpressed. That single act of
respect and regard for the
tribulations that others face
not only gives comfort to the
afflicted expressing their fears
and frustrations but also favours
the one emoting through attention
with a keener appreciation of
their own good fortune that there
but for the grace of happenstance
they might live that sadness.

 

Nagging Nature

Nature knows how faulty our
memory is for her many
choice surprises, however 
predictable they may be. When
dusk falls concluding a day and
dawn creeps beyond our waking
hours we rise to find a world
mystically cleansed, pristine
and white in a startling
transformation that never fails
to please and amaze our
unaccustomed, tardy gaze.
A downy-plush dusting to
shield from fastidious sight
the rude detritus of living
decay sends a frantic note of
survival to woodland creatures
whose consciousness is 
primal whereas we take our
sheltered pleasure in viewing a
white sky whose horizon meets
the crystalline brightness of
a newly wintered landscape.

Toy Roughnecks

They'll have no truck with
their own kind and kindred
the little bigots. Lapdogs to
humans their preferred station
in life. Love them as we most
surely do, it is clear they are
by breeding and inclination
bullies, ruffians of the most
common variety. Twins,
sister and brother, they emit
blood-curdling shrieks of
outrage at the presence of
other dogs large and small.
Discretion leading to social amity
is a spurned concept. Their shrill
braggadocio succumbs to sudden
panic when large dogs, silent
and curious, approach. They
grudgingly befriend squirts
their own size. Yesterday, our
hearts melted when a small
chocolate-brown terrier turned
offended eyes to us and spoke
eloquently and despairingly
of such uncivil manners and
we most certainly agreed.


 

Imperilled

The comforting familiarity
has flickered, gasped and fled.
In its place, a disquieting dimness
a brooding moodiness reflecting
the sombre grey of the sky
the hurling wind, the
implacable chill descending
that advances awareness and an
inherited panic to the primal
consciousness of woodland creatures
evoking in them the survival
instincts that heighten in the
oncoming season. The natural
plenitude of summer and fall
has succumbed to winter's entry.
Survival resources become scarce
during those stark, white months
when they are stalked and hunted
staining the snow with sinister
symbols of the dramas played out
at these times as they become
vulnerable to the inevitability of
privation and the fears that lurk
within dark shadows of the hunt.

The Haunting

The Haunting

She had confidence in herself. In her own intelligence. She felt that she knew her mind was sharper than those of most others her age. She seemed to be able to see what they did not. She had no confidence in the greater world around her. She could see what was happening. People behaving as though they owned something that others were lacking, and because of that, they were better, somehow more elevated - certainly in their own opinion - and that allowed them to mock others, avoid them, pity them, and have contempt for them. She had learned all of that because she experienced all of that.

From the time she was small and lithe and her mother thought she was athletically-inclined and enrolled her in a dance studio for the summer, so she could gain confidence and grace, she was taught such lessons. She hadn’t wanted to go, had no intention of allowing herself to go, but what could she do? She was only six years old, and had to do what she was commanded to do. Entreated, convinced, that it would be of huge benefit to her. To be fair to her mother how was she to know that her daughter would be placed in a group of young girls who had already had the experience of two years’ exposure to the program?

Girls who snickered when she was unable to make the right moves; laughed at her awkwardness, and refused to partner with her, always moved away from her. Pay no mind, her mother said. They’d get over it once they saw that she was as competent as they were. Anyway, her mother said, that’s what girls are like. Little or older they gather in exclusionary cliques and there is always someone who looks in from the outside, spurned. She should know, her mother said, she was one of those ‘outside’ kids.

Take it from her, she always said, you’re better off being with people more like yourself. The ones who think they’re special, never are. They’re just self-absorbed, petty, vindictive and nasty and you want nothing to do with them anyway. That wasn’t how she felt, though, moving up through the elementary school grades, watching the pretty, self-confident girls gather admirers around them, girls almost as pretty, but never as confident, drawn to the stand-outs in the class, wanting to be just like them. She was always with one or two other girls who were as left-out as she was. And even then, found little in common with them. But it did represent companionship, however lacking. And some measure of social acceptance.

Now she was older, and she had become remote from all of that. She recognized it for what it was. Her mother was perfectly right; sometimes she was right, mostly not. She did come around to recognizing that this was the veneer of meaningless fluff. She was as pretty and as clever and as capable as anyone else, she simply lacked that kind of social aggression that seemed to attract the notice of others.

But she did find her niche, among girls who were social outsiders like her, but who devalued the over-rated and utter meaningless of pride in being with the in-crowd. Not the way she did, for the useless façade that it represented, but mostly out of a sense of their own pride. Still, she had to admit to herself there were other girls that were excluded from close acceptance in her own, small group. Others, refused entrée to the luxe cliques and hoping to find acceptance in the lower-tier social groups.

She would have nothing herself to do with the pretensions of these sad girls whose prodigious efforts to ingratiate themselves was so distasteful to her. She was herself. Proudly. She never made an effort to portray herself as anything but what she was, how she felt about things, her perceptions, her values. Take it or leave it, her personality and character was there, up front, visible and clearly defiant of pretension. Those who recognized that and became close to her were her companions, and from and with them she sought solace, though she would never call it that; it was self-affirmation matched by social validation.

And now that she was preparing to enter high school she knew she would be exposed to yet another level of social interaction on an even greater scale offering little gifts of humiliation and occasionally the opportunity to rise above it, continuing to be herself. “You’ll see”, her mother said “it will be different, but don’t get your hopes up, not all that different; just another level.”

Hopes up? She had no hopes. She was cynical, more given to half-full glasses, a term she detested, than viewing life rosily. She was actually, she knew, like her mother. In that sense, if in no other. She would never be like her mother entirely. She would never adapt herself to her mother’s life-style, never.

She had her own aspirations and they didn’t include what she saw of her mother’s life. Dependent on a male partner who never made an effort to consolidate the relationship with an equal effort. None of them, one after the other was worth more than a pile of crap. Losers, every one.

She hardly remembered her father, was left with a dim memory of someone on the sidelines, there but not quite there. Nothing emotional to be recalled about him, as though he’d had nothing emotional invested in her. More than adequately proven by the very fact that though he lived nearby he had never in the decade since their separation, made any effort to contact her Mom, make enquiries about his daughter.

He was so fearful that he might be called upon to contribute to raising her, not by his presence, but by paying child support - which she very well knew was required by law - that he was more than eager to maintain that distance. One her mother had demanded of him. She had promised she would never make an effort to impose child-support payments on him as long as he left them alone. So that was that.

A succession of “Dads” was history. The latest one a quiet guy who tried to be friendly with her, but whom she rebuffed since the day he entered her mother’s life three years earlier. She doubted she would ever become like her mother, so dependent on the company of a man. For companionship, her mother always explained to her. But she couldn’t quite see the ‘companionship’ angle, because it never seemed to work out that way. Seemed to her, the guys were getting a free ride, not investing anything in the relationship, a one-way-street to misery she had no intention of emulating.

But it bugged the hell out of her, having guys around. Her Mom’s guys, to be specific. She felt no attachment to them, no attraction to them, no emotional investment whatever. The one before this guy lasted three years and he was always ordering her around, like he was her father.

So she had no interest in any guy hanging around, because that’s all they ever did. Never made themselves useful, just got in the way. Whenever she wanted to take a shower, he was taking a shower. You’d think she would have priority, but that wasn’t the way it worked. It was her house, her home, not some guy who made nicey-nicey with her Mom for a while and then moved on. Mostly because her Mom got to the stage where she couldn’t stand them any more and invited them to move on. Although the way she carried on when they obliged, you’d think she had lost her one true love.

That’s another thing, she often mused to herself, is there anything like a one true love? Someone like Edward, she giggled to herself. She loved the Twilight books, but even she could recognize them for what they represented, an escape from real life. As though vampires really existed. Made for a good story-line, though. She preferred Jody Picoult, at least there the stories were honestly portrayed, taken from life as it occurred. Thank heavens she has her books, her runaway from life, her escape, her lifeboat.

Boredom still assails her. There’s just so much anyone can do to entertain themselves. She knows she should help her mother, do things around the house. Her mother. Who always speaks of herself as a ‘single mom’. She is that, sure. But she’s still dependent on having a man around. Men who don’t deserve a second thought, another look. What, she wondered, ever attracted her mother to those losers? That they were available, and flattered that a woman like her mother, trim, attractive, smart, a professional, accepted their failings?

She couldn’t quite figure it out, but did figure it to be an easy ride for those guys. Nothing to invest, just hang around and pick the low-growing fruit. She could see this clearly. Why couldn’t her mother? With the first one that she could remember, after her mother’s separation from her father, it was different. She was only four, she was encouraged to call him “Daddy”. And she did, and he did become her daddy. There was someone else who called him Daddy, a boy older than her, but not by much, who came to live with them on the week-ends. Whose mother lived somewhere else, with someone else. And this one she remembered fondly for the seven years he lived with her Mom, and her. He was interested in her, he was good to her, she relied on him. He took her side when her mother went into one of her rages at her 'atrocious' behaviour.

After that, it was downhill all the way. And she resented their presence in her life. Why shouldn’t she? “Be a little more considerate” her mother would tell her, in her better moods, at those times when she wasn’t yelling at her out of sheer frustration, calling her behaviour “atrocious”, telling her she was beyond obstinate. If she was obstinate where did she get it from? From a mother who didn’t know when to give up and who kept trying to find the perfect companion? She would have settled for a lot less than perfect, she would have settled for adequate at the very least, but she could see with her own discerning eye that the entire succession of them were far beyond adequate. On the scale of adequate they were in the dungeon.

But today her mother said she would go out shopping with her. She could look around, “refresh your wardrobe”, as her Mom called it. And it would be only her and her Mom. No hanger-on today. No guy to pull her mother places where she didn’t want to go. Who was more important, anyway to her Mom? Her own kid or some guy who she wasn’t even married to?

They went downtown together. Where a lot of the nicer shops were. To give her a chance to look around. She’d prefer being there with one of her girlfriends, but her Mom didn’t think it was “safe enough” for her to be downtown in the city where they lived, at her age with a friend. Alien abduction? Did her Mom think someone would descend from a hovering spaceship and pluck her out of the crowd?

It was hot, and humid, and looked as though it was going to be a tough slog. When the sun went in and they got a bit of relief then dark clouds loomed on the horizon, gradually nudged the white ones out of the way and threatened to benefit them with a cloudburst.

She felt kind of gloomy, and didn’t want to. Wanted to make the most of this occasion, having her Mom to herself for a change, just the two of them, out shopping for stuff she needed.

And then, walking up to the enclosed mall, sitting on the sidewalk, there was that girl. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than herself. Sitting on the sidewalk, her back hunched forward, behind her a brick wall, the side of a building they were passing. It was gritty and more than a little unappealing with all kinds of detritus lying about. And there was the girl, just sitting there. Her hair long and dank, although it looked as though it would be really pretty, washed and clean and shiny. Which it was anything but. Then she lifted her face, and their eyes locked. She knew the girl was looking directly at her, had raised her head as though aware that someone had fixed a stare on her. That face was utterly devoid of expression. Dead hollow, like her glassy eyes with no depth, just a huge vacancy.

She tried to turn away. To pull her eyes away from those of the girl. The girl remained as she was, her head lifted, protruding like a turtle's though her back was still hunched into her body. The girl’s stare at her was unwavering. She wanted to look away, she didn’t want the girl to think she was intruding on her. Intruding on her? In this public place, where she sat, a forlorn figure, a young girl who was obviously homeless. She had seen other people, shambling men who looked like human wrecks, sitting on the pavement and asking for “spare cash”. Few people, she noted, bothered to acknowledge their presence, let alone hand anything to them.

She had seen other young people, guys and girls, but they seemed like they were kind of comfortable being there where they were, hanging around, occasionally approaching a passerby, speaking briefly, then moving off again, re-joining the others. Her mother pulled her along, told her not to stare. She wasn’t a little kid, she didn’t need to be told not to stare at these anomalous figures. She’d seen them before, on other occasions. And took their presence for granted. Part of the background. Like the buskers, the entertainers, the musicians and singers whom people did notice, and for whom there was always an audience who offered coinage in appreciation. Her mother had told her they were university kids, some of them, making some extra money to help further their education. They weren’t down-and-out, her mother stressed, they were enterprising young people.

So who and what was this girl? A stray. A runaway. Homeless, friendless, hopeless, miserable. These thoughts crowded her head and made her feel queasy. She did, finally, look away. Left the girl sitting there, because they were striding onward toward their destination. No longer in sight, she could forget the girl. But she couldn’t.

Her head was crammed with thoughts she had no wish to contemplate. She felt as though her forehead was being compressed toward the back of her head. Why didn’t she say something to the girl? Anything. “Hi” would have done. She was a person. She ignored that girl as though she was worthless, as though she existed only as a freak, sitting on a sidewalk, abandoned and utterly alone.

It seemed to her, much later on reflection, that the girl had not perhaps felt entirely alone. And this thought gave her a truly eerie feeling, as though something was creeping outward from her interior. She remembered, that while she was locked in eye contact with the girl, she had become aware of a sound, deep within her. It was a voice, a voice she had no idea existed. What was it doing there, screaming, screaming endlessly? And then, silence. Just as she felt she was about to panic, the voice was silenced. And it was at that point that she had turned her head away from the girl.

What would she do if she ever had the kind of misfortune that had obviously led to this girl being alone? How could she look after herself? She knew about predators. She knew about the helpless submission of girls to the pestering nuisance of the guys at school. This was a whole lot different. This girl, how could she defend herself? How would she feel, seeing a girl like her, privileged, walking along with her Mom, someone who couldn’t bother even noticing her other than as an object of curiosity, walking away, not a care about anything.

She felt as though the air had become suddenly dark and thick, crowding her lungs, making it difficult for her to breathe properly. She fell back, no longer matching her mother’s pace, in the crowd of people they had entered as they came closer to the entrance of the mall.

“What’s wrong? Keep up!” her mother said. And then she stopped, looked at her daughter and said “You feel okay? Something wrong?”

“I’m okay. Just didn’t feel too good for a bit. I’m coming.”

Fated

Those were the rules, Tibby
the outside was not for you
however much it beckoned. As an
almost-feral feline adopted as a
rescue you had your own rules
and the country setting with a
teeming wetland right behind
and bird feeders always welcoming
flybys you felt horribly disadvantaged.
But you had ample companions in
a small female cat and lots of
rescue dogs in a home where
everyone tolerated everyone else
including the rabbits. The house
interior represented your hunting
grounds. So there were winter mice
sometimes bats and a watersnake 
on one occasion. Chipmunks too
though if you were caught catching
them, they were rescued. You were
permitted outside within the 
confines of a wire-mesh enclosure
large enough to fit a complement of
dogs as well, so the hummingbirds,
the woodpeckers and the goldfinches
could live another day without a
tabby lurking and pouncing. Well
nurtured, you were a handsome 
fellow, Tibby. What devil possessed
you at age 13 on Friday 13 to
sneak out with the dog pack in 
the rain, unseen, Tibby? Only to be 
found hours later, in the dark on the
highway, crushed lifeless, my dear.

 

Forest At Dusk

This has been a day of
fiercely unrelenting rain
copious and pervasive, the
sheen of dark tree trunks
into whose every crevice
rain found its way
appearing like an arcane
forest of primitive vintage,
stark, dark and bare
masts craning toward the
steel-grey sky as though
beseechingly. Not a bird
to be seen or heard
sheltered wherever they
find haven from the
drenching downpour. The
foliage-littered forest
floor is strangely
twilight-bright as dusk
descends in a shadowless
curtain of sheer grey.

The Restless Mind

In that but dimly understood
twilight time between sleep
and awakening consciousness
memory probes for those
times-past concerns that 
seem to hover deep within.
Recalling events and reactions,
regret and mourning, and 
above all, the pensive what-ifs 
of possibilities that a restless
mind still engaged with sleep
conjures from the interior
of an unwilling return to
hapless guilt in consideration
of failed alternatives. When,
in full realization of retrospect
there are no alternatives.


 

Who, Us?

They're clever little canine
sophisticates with a hunger for
knowledge, searching out wisdom
and the beauty of words, prepared
to swallow it all in their zest to
become literary academics. Modestly,
lest we marvel overmuch at their genius
they nonchalantly wander off as
we enter our home's library
wondering what the two black
scamps have been up to, the
silence ringing through the house
alerting us to mischief. But no,
our suspicions have no basis
in reality we conclude admiring
their peerless sangfroid as they
nonchalantly turn from scholarship
to wrestling on the library rug.
Days later, the vacuum sucks up
the minuscule bits of binding
we hadn't noticed earlier, nibbled
expertly in translation from a
venerable old tome our so-very
discriminating puppies discovered
on the enticingly approachable
and irresistible bottom bookshelf.

November Sun

It has returned in triumph
that brazen, bronzed warrior
from its battle with the
dark forces of nature that
dispatched legions of sinister
threats within the battlefield
of seasonal affective disorder
which has sent darkness
where there was once light,
and a cold atmosphere to
remind us who is directing
the affairs of the universe
sending watery bombs and
icy daggers of electrical charges
onto our helpless heads. Little
wonder we venerate our
life-enhancing champion
turning our faces to its 
comforting warmth and light
welcoming the sun back to its
protective throne in the
firmament, banning for the
moment, storms pre-winter.

Clockwork

This home is just like any other
 normal household best served 
when routine is observed for 
maximum practical efficiency, 
and so we certainly have our share
of timepieces as reminders
of time and to keep us alert
to very specific events requiring
attention. However, we also
have realized yet another
element in aid of memory 
and to that end have perfected
cross-species communication.
In the morning our two little
poodles, hugely expectant,
inform us so. The female
emits high-pitched whines and
the male barks up a storm of
reminders as a breakfast duet.
At dinner time the routine
is slightly altered as silently
but purposefully, Jack leaps
onto the sofa to begin nibbling
on the newspaper in my hands
while Jill prefers to nibble
my toes, and both are rewarded
with instant attention to the time
and their very desperate condition
for if their food is not immediately
proffered they will perish.

Evading Justice

Witness testimony at trial
drew an indelible picture
of a stupefyingly inebriated
woman leaving a tavern
entering her large expensive
vehicle against the entreaty
of an unidentified man. They
watching incredulously as she
backed into another parked vehicle
then gunning the engine to
drive at erratic speed onto the
adjoining highway, veering 
into and out of her lane,
barely missing a stone wall
until finally driving head on
into the opposite lane and
oncoming traffic where
evasive action by a man
returning home from work in
his pick-up failed to save his life.
Another tragedy resulting from
the arrogance of vehicular
homicide, at the wheel of a
drunk driver with enough money
to hire a crack counsel viewing
the law as a game of sharp
minds cleverly evading justice.

It's Autumn

With careless abandon
Nature disposes. Gone is
the carefree atmosphere of
summer, the warmth of the
sun, itself barricaded behind
the dark stormy clouds of
November. Gone is the foliage
thanks to wind and copious rain
limp now and tattered on the
forest floor after their glorious
transformation from vibrant
greens to orange, gold and
crimson, now but a fleeting
memory. The ephemera of the
garden swallowed into the 
soil to sleep. Gone are the
summer songbirds. Gone the
year that was, now in holding
pattern, awaiting the winter
solstice and a new year.

The Torch

They represent our investment
in the future, those national
monuments depicting the fallen
and the victorious, although
neither signal triumph but rather
stern gloom at what humankind
has wrought in the wholesale
destruction of civilized norms,
the bombing of society's welfare,
the agony of survivors mourning
their dead, never seeming to learn
from one generation to the one
following, these golden rules of
moderation, tolerance and care
for one another. Those annual
national commemorations 
recalling our debt to those who
act on the battlefield to deny
tyrants their pursuit of global
conquest viewed as an obligation
in veneration of peace and liberty.
The contorted values of merciless
ideologies ravenously devour
social contracts pursuing a global
compact of humanity's desire to
live harmoniously, inciting clan,
tribe, ethnicity and the primal
territorial imperative. All this a
struggle between the good and
the evil that we inherit. And so,
we honour the tradition, lest we
forget, of remembering with the
grave pomp and ceremony it
deserves, aged veterans of aged
wars honoured for their sacrifice
their wrinkled grey visages
a fragile mask of bewilderment.