When's Dinner?

Mine is a venerable though
not a particularly venerated
profession. And no, it is not
that one; I prefer to walk
on forest paths to being
a street-walker. I have
studied long and hard
first as a raw apprentice
aspiring to the status of
one who experience would
recognize as a mistress of
the craft of maintaining a
household with warmth
and comfort. And what
more comforting than the
capability to produce meals
whose aroma penetrate all
chambers of a home well
lived in, meals whose promise
of flavour supreme invites all
those whose senses are
exposed to its irresistible call
to converge with a single
query: When's dinner?

Cardiologist

His is an angular lean
and gaunt face
chiselled deeply with
the concern of one whose
academic training failed
to instill in him an 
emotional distance
from those his profession
serves. He is himself tall
and spare, body curved
in an ellipse of concentrated
attention to detail. He
must somehow infuse
into the obtuse mind
personal responsibility
for unthinking choices
imperiling their longevity
unwilling to submit
to the reality that 
patients willingly shirk
his admonitions secure
in their trust that his
expertise will save them
from their neglect to
self. His conflict is with
genes and age and faulted
lifestyle. Febrile in his
anxiety he ages prematurely
succumbing to nervous tics
suffocating under the
weight of his assumed
authority over death.

The New Reality

Quivering and quaking
in disbelief the
world staggers in the
new reality of a rank
world figure strutting
the global stage in
a gleeful portrayal of
unrestrained power
whose edicts impose
the impulse of an
egocentric idiocy
at large oblivious to
their effects as one
glorying in crude
ostentation has replaced
another whose impotence
to act reflected the
emperor whose
moral nudity left wide
a vacuum flooded
with the stark 
desolation of fear
and morbidity of moral
certainty rocks the
world so delicately out
of kilter, balancing from
bare utility to dysfunction.

Photo: Sebastian Scheiner, AP

With Malice

When he pleaded
in anguish seventy
years ago the world 
responded with 
withering silence.
Small wonder
he feels forlorn and 
abandoned, his frail
wizened, blind face
pained with the unending
memory of the death
camp the death march
the countless deaths
that left desolation
of the world he knew
a vast empty landscape
of haunted places
and haunting faces 
he lives and relives
endlessly, the reel of
memory softly clicking
its unfond reminiscences
of extermination and
pitiless solutions
to the existence of such
as he while others
busy themselves denying
such events occurred
not as expressions of
disbelief at the extent of
murderous hatred but
of spite unrequited.

Sharing The Road

They emerge from their vehicles
crabbed with age, moving slowly
for it takes time for their aching
limbs to be mobilized, moribund brain 
cells taking their leisurely time to send
those electrical signals to those
far removed, tardy legs and arms
which have half-forgotten their
rhythm and obligatory
cooperation with no memory
whatever of that time in distant
history when they moved with the
alacrity, firmness and grace of youth.
Gnarled and bent, backs hunched
with the concentration of a
creature clinging to life, they
advance in slow-motion, clinging
to walkers, to canes, to one another.
You recoil viscerally witnessing
their painful progress, knowing
they are of your generation
some indeed younger, as they
move through supermarket aisles
clinging to shopping carts for
support, erratically navigating
and you shudder, not imagining that
one day you will be as they are
but with the knowledge that you
may not share their ambulatory
plight, but soon they will laboriously
exit the store, make their way to
their vehicle where brain and body
will coordinate overdrive, and it
is the roadway you will share.

Newfallen Snow

Ephemeral it may be
but it is a radiant sight to behold
the snowbound forest
wrapped like a gift from nature
from the great bowl of the heavens
reflecting in the stellar hue
of a precious metal
like platinum hovering over
the landscape tufted with
newfallen snow
adhering to the forest floor
to winter-nuded deciduous
trees and green conifers
alike garlanded lavishly 
with scintillating crystals lit
by an icy atmosphere
brilliant and perfectly
composed, a mastercrafted
vision of perfection
that only those whose
haven it is may appreciate.

Public Office

Apprentice to politics
mounting the world stage
at the precipice of power
and strategic influence
that stage when superb
oration garnered applause
even as action and results
           collapsed      the
prestige remains with
the retired office holder
whose name is legend.
What now, in the works?
There's gold in them there
hills of speech making
and opportunities to burnish
credentials intact in the minds
of believers. Oh cynic
versed in elocution and
circumlocution      now
telling tales out of class 
through proxy revelations
as listeners imagine themselves
wielding power-by-remote
theirs       for the price of
entry to hear those tall tales
from the tall, dark familiar.
Finally, legitimacy achieved
       as power speaks truth 
to the privileged unwashed.

Women of the World

They are colossi and like Sumo
wrestlers shrewdly judging their
next moves to outflank the other
this is but a side-issue, irrelevant to
the matter of brawn over cunning.
The issues are immense, out-sizing
the contestants; global trade, nuclear
weapons, conflicts and where each
stands on the sidelines directing
combatants in proxy wars whose
conclusion signals which will gain
command while the balance of the
world order teeters. What totters on
the other hand is the plight of half
the world as women stand on the
brink of a renewed order threatening
to haul them back to a bitter history 
not-so-distant of utter subservience 
to the dictates of the other half. The 
criminal offences of battery and rape 
to be mitigated as though love can be 
wrapped in verbal and physical bruises 
and women must once again submit 
to the order of desensitized patriarchy. 
They march with placards defiantly 
expressing their rage. Women enfeebled 
by age but not intention alongside 
the fresh battalions now carrying 
the torch of denial and freedom 
from oppression, resurgent.

Angus

Stolidly imperturbable
self-assured and devoted
to the sense of his own
inimitable agency, Angus
though but a mite of white
fluffy hair and an
enquiring expression is
one-of-a-kind, a mature
and thoughtful little mutt.
Little, as in very small
but with an expansive heart
has he. Aversive to
coddling and the overt
protection proffered by
his human, his sense of
self offended, yet he
perseveres. When out
rambling on a woodland trail
he will momentarily waylay
the obligatory requirement
to remain docile at her
side, and trot ahead
soon out of sight but
never, ever out of mind.
As her voice rises in panic
the stoic little chappie
reverses direction to
make his unwilling return
to placate her concern.

Arras

A field of snow
       growing
in the silence.

Sun softening
the gentle swells
illuminating
      crystals.

Wind bends
a long straw
and winds it slowly
ornamenting the
pristine blanket

with an oval
         repeated
and repeated.

A mouse shelters
in a snowhole
nibbling windfallen seed;
leaving droppings
in the frozen nest.

Hare tracks
cluster under
shelter of a
snow-laden pine.

There -- the
outspread wings
of a falcon
imprinted on the snow

 -- and there the
hare tracks end.
There is no blood
to colour the
monomorphic plane.

Shush, Listen: Whaat!

The order of magnitude may be 
reduced but it is an issue that is 
well-recalled and repeated, that
when a normally rambunctious home
suddenly seems eerily silent it is likely
time to search for the reason. When we
were young, it was three children whose
well-being and mischief prodded us
to tiptoe into a scene of quiet miscreant 
chaos to be faced by bewildered little
visages wondering what all the fuss is
about, offended when harm-inducing
objects were snatched from their naive
intentions. Now that we're old/er the
sudden realization that our house reeks
with another kind of mischief when all
is still though just moments earlier 
our ears were filled with raucous calls
and the staccato of short legs racing
about the house, that old alert is
resurrected. We simply exchanged
children for puppies, and it isn't the
little girl the impish one but her brother
never more fulfilled than when he 
impels her to join him in the huge fun
that erupts when they take forbidden 
possession of objects meant to be kept 
from their predation. When we creep 
around the corner to observe two little 
heads swivel in unison with expressions
ranging from defensive to contrite. Yet no
scolding infinitely repeated suffices to
persuade those black mites their antics 
are forbidden and must cease forthwith.

Not Forgotten

Tomorrow is my baby brother's
67th birthday. This will be the second
year that I failed to send him a birthday
card. Quaint, calling him my baby
brother but in fact that's what he once
was, a baby I tended to when I was a
teen. I could call him my kid brother.
I could call him the youngest of my
siblings. And I could call him and
congratulate him on his birthday, or
email him, because we lived quite a
geographic distance from one another
for many years. But he was always my
baby brother, there's that bond that
made our relationship different from
that of the others. Always ready with a
quip, a most jocular personality beyond
peer. Some baby. He stood taller and
much bulkier than me. But he was always
there, popping up when least expected
so we could renew those bonds. I will
not call him or write to him. I will not
give him my fond greeting for having
achieved another birthday. He no longer
has birthdays. Gone, but not forgotten.


 

Making The Effort

Remember, when your mind begins
to wander and your attention wavers
noticing how restless your dog has
become, that this is your valued friend
and neighbour telling you of his pain
and consternation. You're reminded
of how it was as a child standing
beside your parents en route to some
destination, they quietly hearing out
a tale of misery spoken by a needy
acquaintance and your fidgety
whining, urging your parents to get
on with it, earning a reprimand and 
later a lesson on the human obligation
to turn an attentive ear and empathy
to those requiring it. And now recall
this is the very person who in your own
need rushed to support you as though
you represented a member of his very
own family, and how uplifted you felt.

The Wind's Imperative

Yes, the thermometer offered the same
balmy reading as yesterday, just a tad
over freezing, though then the sun's
rays warmed the atmosphere and there
was a mere wisp of wind. No, there was
no reading that informed us a ferocious
intermittent wind whipped through the
forest as we set off into its confines
under a sky laden with pewter clouds
preparing to release another snowstorm.
No matter, thought we, well garbed for
the weather, new down-filled mittens
snugly encasing our hands in the
assurance that no bad-tempered day
would tamper with our quotidian venture.
The ice-tamped woodland trails no
challenge for our boots fortified with
cleats, on we forged through the familiar 
byways of the ravined forest. Up slopes 
and down again, crossing rough bridges 
gaining access across the ravine's
still-coursing waterway, the day opened
before us, the sight of snow-crusted trees
and the overwhelmingly white-and-black
landscape as bewitching as always. Then
the realization that the prevailing wind
was insidious and nasty, probing our
faces, assiduously searching vulnerable
spaces, discovering them in our steadily 
freezing digits. We laboured on against 
the wind even as the sun attempted and 
failed to impose its presence beyond 
the opaque screen shielding the world 
below from its vibrant light and comfort.

The Elderly Hospital

It is a proudly venerable institution
a sprawling, red-brick edifice of
considerable age and girth, much like
the elderly within the constantly growing
population of the city. Just as age has
conferred on them added weight of years
and poundage, the hospital has been the
subject of countless additions over the
years. Its corridors a long and endless
mysterious maze to those uninitiated
in the intricacies of its varied and many
departments and sub-sections, with their
uncountable examining rooms. In one
of which sits a septuagenarian a month
shy of eighty, patiently awaiting his
post-surgical cardiac appointment. 
There, he is courteously greeted as his
cardiologist enters, shakes his hand
cocks his head and avers how well he
appears, introducing him to male and
a female interns whose appearance
remind the patient of his grandchildren.
Observe, the doctor tells the interns,
the sternum, healed after open-heart
surgery, then lifting the patient's pant-leg
points out the long scars alongside the
calf where a major vein was selected to
replace a blocked artery. The doctor
recalls the robust, muscular chest he had
examined of a man in outstanding
clinical health who lifted weights as
opposed to the man before him whose
loss of muscle mass and weight was
a startling contrast. The interns lean
forward, smiling, as the doctor lauds his
patient's recovery from a surgery that
replaced his mitral valve, assuring the
patient that all was well, blood and oxygen
flowing unrestricted to his heart and
congratulations; same time next year.


 

The Dance Floor

Theirs is a working kitchen, a pantry
at one end, large baking island in the 
middle, and an expanse of floor all 
around. As a working kitchen it happily 
offers daily meals of nutritious value 
and the fragrant delight of baked 
treats that only a woman charged with
enthusiasm over her sixty years of
marriage has the experience and skills
to meet the warmth and expectation 
a well-used kitchen can muster so
matter-of-factly. Besides its utilitarian
function, it is also a place of social
recreation. A dance floor, would you
believe? And why not, since one would
be hard put to dance on rugs that cover
other floors meant for relaxation. So
the kitchen it is where he and she sway
while clasping one another, dancing to
old, familiar tunes that so delight their
ears. Sometimes he sings the words and
sometimes she does. And when he holds
her, she feels as she once did a lifetime
ago, young and lithe and adored again.

Comforting Me

I take radiant comfort, my dear
in the loving warmth of your smile
for you are to me as the sun is to all
living things, indispensable as life
itself. I take comfort, my love in
the sight of you, the touch of you
the care you take for me. I take such
comfort in our shared love of life
our adventure through life carrying
us from there to here. I take pride
that you love me, that you view me
with pride and admiration as I do
you. I take pleasure in the things
we do together, our love of books
and our shared conversations of
how we view the world about us.
I take pleasure, as the companion
of my soul, in our love of nature
and of its creatures. I take comfort
in having you beside me at night, a
hand's reach distance, warming me
and fulfilling my every need to know
that wherever I turn, there you are.

 

The Slumbering Forest

The forest knows nothing of
superstitious days of sinister
reputation; it slumbers peacefully
irrespective that this is a Friday,
the thirteenth day of a new year.
Insensible to the ways in which
time is measured, the forest has
its own reckoning of time passing
and yet to come, what it has
experienced and what nature will
endlessly repeat in a plenitude of
green growth and the stark limiting
of that progress as growth recedes
taking shelter from irascible winds
tormenting the aged trees of the
forest, beset by bark-cracking ice
while life-sap takes shelter in
roots firmly ensconced beneath a
forest floor rich in humus sheltered
by the snowpack. Nature wills
her creatures to endure and they
do, an alchemy of memory biding
time heartened by the sun's bright
clarity on this auspicious day.

Stressing The Test

!!DANGER!! shrieked the stout
container: !Radioactive Waste!
compelling notice of the injectables
the efficiently courteous technician
deposited after swiftly infusing the
contents through the IV port she had
penetrated the vein in my inner arm
so effortlessly and relatively painlessly.
Given time for the nuclear medicine
marker to reach my heart, the next
step was an introduction to a gamma
camera mounted like the snout of a
great, terrifying beast on a retractable
movable apparatus under which the
gurney I lay upon moved smoothly
mechanically underneath. The beast's
handler explained little while busily
attaching the electrodes to my skin
shrinking from the contact, skilled
in manoeuvring the controls that
made my heart stop in the kind of terror
that overtakes the unprepared as the
beast hovered, then descended upon
my chest, shifting from one vantage to
another, taking the photographs that
would inform the cardiologist what
conclusions he would infer from the
diagnostic miracle that so intimidated
me, to prescribe a course of action
intended to prolong my life in a gamble
that intervention would do just that.

January Thaw

The vast hovering vault of the sky
has shed its Janus face of yesterday's
snow-infused pewter countenance,
turned it into a great blue sea of
benevolent presence, the sun in its
throne beaming good-naturedly and
warming the atmosphere unseasonally.
This weather largess has a notable
dissenter, a morose wind forcefully
inciting masts of trees to a dance
they scarce can refuse to participate
in, as that wind bellows through the
forest canopy, shedding pine, spruce
and fir of their decorative sheathing
of scintillating snow. Even so, the
moderating atmosphere and the heat
of the sun melts the light, top layer
of the snowpack on the floor of the
forest, releasing the icebound creek
as it runs amok, travelling the course
of the forest and on to larger water
courses feeding the mighty river beyond.

 

Snow-Laden Clouds

Just past midday on this winter
afternoon, a subdued atmosphere
prevails, where an aura of dusk
pervades the snowbound woods.
The landscape has divided itself
into monotones of dark-and-light.
White, the forest floor, but for slight
interruptions at random intervals
where wind has wrenched branches
dead and live, from their canopied
perches, a natural pattern of untidy
episodic reminders of flux and
renewal. Dark and stark trees
outlined against the opaque light
grey of the sky surfeit with snow
yet to descend. Clumps of snow
and of ice adhere to every surface
persuaded now and again by the
insistent wind, to release upon the
icy atmosphere. Fingers of cold
probe and penetrate every crevice
and crotch where overwintering
insects and birds seek shelter. At
the crest of a hill where spruce, fir
and pine recede, stag-horn sumacs
proliferate, and there, beyond in
the sky, the sun struggles in vain to
penetrate the snow-suffused clouds.

 

The Stars At Night

The probing minds of astrophysicists
and astronomers are busy validating
the presence of far-off galaxies where
planetary bodies revolve around their
very own suns, so many vastly larger
than our own, and there, in that far-off
distance, exist planets whose numbers
challenge the grains of sand on a beach
where extraterrestrial life undoubtedly
exists of an advanced order greatly
superior to our own. Unlike other
earthlings I have never yet come across
a visiting creature, hovering spacecraft
in distant view which some claim to have
experienced and with whom they claim
to have communicated. Far be it for
me to doubt, yet were I ever to chance
upon such a creature, given I could
retain my wits I would ask why these
efforts to make contact with earthly
humankind, a species which has never yet
mastered the art of simply tolerating 
one another. And, I would challenge
this creature, if you are indeed so
amazingly technologically advanced 
and cerebrally brilliant, why don't you
read the intergalactic news media to
discover before committing to contact
just how maladjusted and psychotic a
brand is Earth's humanity? Beware!

 

HisStory

From its primal cradle in prehistory
spilling into the millennia to follow
nature's pride of formulaic design
in creating a creature capable of
taking possession of her alternate
formulations, striving to emulate
her formidable talents evolved into a
mass of organisms each of which 
became a simulacrum of the original
suffused with the emotional rages
that she herself exhibits in fire, flood
and ice, translating those to an impulse
toward chaos, terror and destruction
stimulated by tribal aggression fed
by territorial advantage; religious
persecution stirred by theocratic hubris;
the compulsion general among
the species, to subjugate others to the
conquest and command of the bold
and those impervious to empathy
toward other living souls. That element
of nature that creates beauty and peace
transfers itself to those capable of
creation and discovery whose nimble
minds cannot conceive of what drives
the evil that besets the world, as they
themselves choose to bypass it all
engrossed in expending their energy
on artistic endeavours, labours of love
and of pensive thought, wonder and
bewilderment at the chaos and wild
disruptions raging about them. In their
naivete oblivious to the carnage, long
since convinced their philosophy of
the inherent goodness of humankind
in all its manifestations cannot be denied.