Hunter's Impulse

Impulsive by nature his is a conviction to
strike when serendipitous opportunity beckons.
His elevated sense of aesthetic draws him
irresistibly to paintings of centuries before
to hand-crafted objects of elegant design
material and production of enduring
beauty. Clocks and porcelains, bronzes
and animalia animate his collector's eye
whetting his appetite for the chase. Enthused
to acquisition in a lifetime dedicated to
informing himself, refining his tastes
reflecting his own creative compulsion
as an artist and craftsman his criteria are
precise and instructive. His home burgeons
with decades of choice selections and he
recalls where each was discovered and
priced, his prized possessions. Yet there
is no end to the deep-seated urge that
overtakes his ongoing quest. A chance
sighting of a bronze sculpture, a prowling
tiger realized and cast impressively took
him aback, sending him into a frenzy of
rationalizing its possession. There it stood
beckoning. And the price? That too beyond
dispute and the seller seized the moment
closing on the opportunity that beckoned.

Regeneration

The ancient granite of the mountains
aeons ago cleft by the irresistible
passage of spring snow-melt and
seasonal rains took occasion to shed
their outer mantle, unstable and loosed
by the elements, tumbling to the
valleys below lining streambeds with
boulders the heights discarded, now
to guide meltwater over their rugged
confines in great bursts and bellows
of raging torrents irrepressible in
their passage, hurtling their way
downstream, gathering the loose
detritus of the mountains, sweeping
the slopes clean to deposit torn
bracken and branches, rocks and
earthworks in a massive movement
of matter re-distributed in nature's
endless transition of waste recycled
to her reborn purpose of regeneration.

The Mountain Road

The mountain road was engineered
to loop up and around the slopes
of the great granite rises hugging their 
sides and dropping vast distances below. 
Hair-pin turns and switch-backs dictate 
a sedate and cautious drive when fog 
rolls in to obscure sightlines barely more 
when the sun floats high in a cloudless sky. 
Mountain peaks appear and rise in a rapid 
succession  of spectacular scenes, their 
slopes hirsute with conifers and the 
forests thick with deciduous trees
floating serenely in the valleys below
virtually glowing in shades of crimson
amber and chartreuse, the colour-ephemera 
of this autumnal mountainous season.

Practising to Deceive

So much has been written in
nostalgic praise for nature of the
benefits inherent in the freedom to
move unhindered by the strictures of
modern life, to feel the cleansing breeze
of forest-scrubbed air redolent of fall
foliage, the tannin crisp and tangy
the forest canopy a brightness of 
greens, golds and rust; red maples
a sturdy blaze of heated shades
reaching to the blue, blue sky, a
rain of yellow birch leaves lazily
descending to the forest floor, an
enrapturing landscape inviting the
opportunity to flex urban-lazy
muscles and abandon limbs to the
liberty of free movement. The couple
couple, able at last in their leisure
years to indulge their passion for
nature's wholesome ambiance extract
themselves from their vehicle to breathe
the purity of the forest, stepping toward
the beckoning trail, marvel at the
glorious shades of rainbow colours 
slowly stroll a hundred yards, take
quick photos of one another, rictus
smiles of pride backstopped by
falling foliage, and with that proof
assured, sigh and swiftly drive off.

The Forlorn Cemetery

The headstones are narrow and thin
lightly sprinkled with life for mass
colonies of mosses as old as the interred
cling to their chiseled memory obscuring
names and dates in a cemetery placed
on the outer edge of a town small enough
that a country walk would lead to this
mournful place of serene contemplation
not too far from the homes of families
who loved them, so long ago. Just as
well those headstones of narrow grey
granite now blackened with creeping
lichen have loosened their grip, now
leaning companionably toward the 
others' space, for their quiet communion
has taken the place of family visits and
the cemetery once secluded has become
a busy place, for the narrow country road
is now a highway, the constant distraction
of a harried pace the modern era has
gifted to the present providing the quaint
sight of a dilapidated field of graves, a
split-second vision motorists are never
quite certain they've passed en route.

Foliage Boats

The mountain stream that fumed
and spumed in spring has been tamed
by fall's entry, no longer raging
in frothy bursts over the granite
boulders hurled down the mountainside
to line its runway; the water coursing
relentlessly, frigid from the snow that
briefly iced the summits overnight
melting in the slanted heat of the
autumn sun. On its banks conifers
and deciduous, the yellow birch
maple and beech slowly dripping
foliage tinged in scarlet, gold and 
bronze stippling the forest floor with
the gay confetti of the season, sending
bright boats of foliage swirling madly
down the fall-tamed mountain stream.

Mountain Fog

Fierce blasts of wind high in the
atmosphere drove the dark, ragged
clouds toward the looming mountain
peaks harpooning them to resist the
winds' continuing thrust, the clouds
impaled, compelled to release their
moisture-heavy burden. The notch
between the mountains barely visible
encased in an opaque screen of fog 
creating a narrow corridor of limited 
visibility, the mystery of the vanishing 
mountains lifted momentarily through
 a brief opening when the massive slope
of a mountain, sheathed doubly in an
ancient rockfall could be sighted
then once again obscured behind the
impenetrable grey shield. Silence
reigned as supreme as the rain that
drenched the landscape, an arras
immense in its granite dominance yet
contracted and hidden as rain and
mist joined the all-conquering fog.

The Garden and I

We shared a genial accord -- that both
parties to the agreement must be pleased
with the outcome to our mutual satisfaction.
My garden had a will to thrive and host a
wide bouquet of beautiful plants, shrubs
trees and flowers, and I had a will that it
should. To which end we reached our pact
agreeing that I would select and plant all
that I could, and it should nourish and
encourage all that it might and we would
both, the garden and I, accomplish our
goal. Good to its word the garden performed
all that was required of it permitting me to
plant, to trim and to tidy while the garden
provided the rich soil, exposure to sun and
rain warding off as best it could the garden
thugs like snails and beetles, fungi, mildew
and blights, the result providing us both
the garden and I, with pride and possession
of an endless stream of flowering annuals
and perennials, the glowing greens and
the golds, children of the sun, the flaming
crimsons and creamy whites, petals single
and doubly-enfolded, fragrance divine
their texture and architecture providing
a landscape of ever-changing aspects like
a colour prism forever turning in the light.

The Sodden Forest

Though this is a northern hemisphere
mixed forest of conifers and deciduous
this late afternoon fall landscape has an
appearance of exoticism, it is dripping
with moisture, a light mist rises from
the brimming creek within the ravine
that bisects the woodlands, and there is
a shimmering dusk that magnifies the
autumn colours bedecking the canopy.
Chickadees and a nuthatch flicker from
sopping branch to branch chattering
between themselves in the language of
the boreal forest. Every gust of wind
brings down a fresh hail of bright
foliage on the forest floor. One leaf
is caught by a spider's web and it swings
back and forth rhythmically, wobbling
on the wind, suffused with rainfall. The
sky, an inverted bowl heavy with moisture
will shortly tip its ocean of rain once
again swelling the foaming creek even
more, sending the birds toward shelter
drenching the canopy and doubtless in
its fierce downfall freeing that leaf.

The Rationality of Science

The formula is a peculiar one, the
result of which is a timeline with death.
Exulting over success in accomplishing
nuclear fission, science, that most rational
of exploratory missions had succeeded in
unravelling one of nature's mysteries. Far
best left in its state of mystery rather than
impacting us with a state of misery but
who might have foreseen the ultimate
conquest in a febrile mind might equate
with mass destruction? Oh yes, of course,
those who had mounted that success when
the euphoria finally ebbed and the realization
set in and regret and an absorbed horror of
the inevitable future lingered in the minds
of those brilliant mystery-breakers. We
have learned to deplore the prospect of
those nuclear-tipped missiles yet tuck the
deep thoughts of the inevitable deep in
the most obscure and dark recesses of our
minds. It is best not to linger, to wring out
of life the pleasures still to be had and in
the process lend ourselves to the pretense
shielding ourselves from reality that there
is no need to concern ourselves since our
leaders have everything well in hand...

Familiarity

Now you think of it, it's been quite a while
 since you last saw him and shared one of those 
casual, neighbourly conversations over the back 
fence. Even so you can hardly credit that to 
your inability to recognize old Bob, he looks so
-- odd. Odd, which is to say old, weary, lined
nowhere near like the Bob you know -- thought
you knew. Clearly he is not himself. You think.
You saw someone struggling to push a stroller
child within, up a steep hill on an urban forest
trail where you like to take your leisure and
people like Bob never do. You stood at the crest
of the hill, speaking with another hiking familiar
when your attention swivelled to that slow agony
of ascent, the man grappling with the stroller
the child alert to its surroundings and you
partially descend to confront the man and offer
help when that old face began to resemble
Bob's, and the voice that extruded its gravel
pitch resembled Bob's and bloody-damn! if it
wasn't Bob! Whose slow verbal delivery was
newly unfamiliar, just as unfamiliar as that new
rendition of a long-familiar face. So you chat
and complete the ascent together, and Bob
rambles into a one-sided conversation and you
respond and commiserate about the difficulties
inherent in grandparents aiding children with
their grandchildren when the marriage implodes
because you're familiar with that syndrome but
though you were fully immersed in it, the strain
failed to sap any remaining vestiges of youth
and vigour and capacity to think and to emote.

Playing The Part

Don't we hunger after, utterly adore
any opportunity to inspect hints of dirty
linen as long as it is not our own. And
what could be more eagerly perused
with the indignation of sanctimony
than the lascivious brutishness of the
crass movie mogul celebrity in close
proximity wielding the power of position
over emerging stars of the screen and
the voting booth? We crave every last
delicious morsel to feed our outrage,
no salacious detail too obscure to reveal.
A frenzy of bottom-feeding has been
unleashed in the unabashedly conceited
bowl of Hollywood celebrity as all the
catfish vie with one another to capture
the attention of a world of admiration
theirs to be had for the taking through
revelations and denials, sympathies and
heartfelt unburdening of the soul as
the cream of the elite bare their breasts
in personal agonies of indecision and
commitment. In a world where it has
always been difficult to discern where
politics ends and entertainment enters, the
actors in this drama declare their innocence
of knowledge much less intent to deceive.
The moral transgressor following a long
tradition of the trade, and the accusers
flawlessly portraying the seamy world
slumbering deep within their profession
echoing the habits of society's world of
the demi-monde suddenly outraged that
they be revealed, an integral component.

In The Grand Scheme

View of Universe Captured by Hubble Space Telescope: NASA

In The Grand Scheme

Limitless, beyond the imaginative scope
of our understanding, it is a bleak, dark
and threatening place, this universe of
which we represent a mere spark of existence.
It is and we are all part of nature's elaborate
unknowable design whose purpose is her
enduring affair, not divulged to us. In nature's
plan we theorize a spontaneous combustion
igniting from nothingness out of an immense
void. From nothing arose everything. On
Earth as it is in Heaven. Where darkness
prevails and spiralling nebulous chemicals
and minerals become something, elusive
and unknown. The void remains yet is
no longer without content. The universe
unfolds and expands, its presence a vast
continuum of timeless infinity. This is a
construct of terrible beauty and precision
sublime and yet desolate, perhaps a game
that nature has devised where matter is
invariably consumed, inexorably and with
a grim finality that may or may not serve
to please its maker and we have little
option but to hope we will be forgotten.

A Teaching Occasion

This is quite the occasion, a debut of
distinction, an introduction to the social
life that he will inhabit for the duration of
his companionship with the tall man
walking alongside the little fellow, both
engaged in communicating across species
both succeeding admirably, each taking
their own, shared and individual pleasure
in their new linkage to life. What a sight he
is, fluffed silky hair, eyes brimming with
curiosity, his paws outsized to his plump
little body, dressed by nature in shades of
charcoal with a proud white chest blaze and
white booties, trotting along at age three
months as though bred to the leash. Sit,
he is told, and miraculously Tim-Bit stops
without hesitation, and sits. And watches
with fascination as two three-year-old dogs
excitable and shrill, challenge his presence
on their trail in their woodland setting. As
an introduction to canine social niceties
the puppy waits with a degree of uncertainty
until the commotion is muted and with
regained confidence ventures to offer a
tussle with the intruders, sized small like
him, but three years older. Clearly in
Tim-Bit's short lean on life he has learned
more than they have absorbed; a quick study
he is. Intuitively he knows his mission in
life is to guide his companion to contentment
and happiness in his company and in the
process teach him the conceit that he is the
guide to the puppy not that the puppy has
mastered their relationship in his capacity
as chef de mission for the finite duration.

Peace Be Upon You

With malice aforethought? No, even
though the thought is obviously classifiable
as malevolent, and the thought spoken
just as obviously reflects the visceral
belief that any reaction to Islamofascism
much less criticism of Islam's pure vision
of 'peace' as a construct for war reflecting
its classification of the world outside Islam
as war against Allah to which the faithful
are obliged to respond as warriors for the
crescent moon is truly a scimitar meant
to punish the unbelievers and in the process
bring them to the state of peace so well
represented by Islam. Yet any who are
declared biased against Islam and stamped
as Islamophobic are guilty of judging the
world's sole true religion expressing its
god's will to conquest. There is no free
will in Islam, only god's will, and free 
agency, the personal the future and the 
present are consumed in obeisance to 
Islam, a totality of surrender to a deity 
of peace who bids the faithful to persuade 
by the sword all those who fail to
recognize the divine messenger and the
message that there is no god but Allah and
Mohammed is his messenger, Allahu Akbar!

Inventing Reality

His novels were wildly popular, they
seemed to scintillate with the kind of
bleak malice and a zeitgeist sense of loss
in emphasizing his contempt for politics
and politicians to a sizzling degree that
his readers connected with. His skill at
portraying political figures as crassly
mendacious hypocrites whose only
discernible interest was achieving their
goals of power, prestige and opportunity
to dip their grasping fingers into the public
treasury resonated with people because his
writing style, dripping with contempt still
managed to bring a wry humour to the
matter, with little hilarious peculiarities
revealed about these power figures that
characterized them as pathetic losers
despite which they fooled all the people
all the time. People related, they howled
with rage and laughter reading his work.
At public book signings a stage would
be set up for the great man to read
passages of his latest, his voice curled
with the acid of his unconcealed anger
at the characters he drew with such notable
ease in the pages of his novels; nasty
little charlatans all. And then the strangest
thing, the very people who shared this
writer's venom for the people of power
the pretenders occupying influence and
squandering of their tax dollars witnessed
the appearance of this novelist's avatar
stepping out of the pages of his book
wildly acclaiming him as the new leader 
of the free world, voting into office the 
very embodiment of all the attributes of 
avarice, corruption and arrogance they 
deplored in the novel, and cheered on the
newly elected president. Who's laughing?

 

Gone Missing

Have you lost your mind? Lately, that
is. Misplaced it...? Something like that. 
Certain, are you? I wouldn't be -- on your
behalf, that is. Because, fact is you never
know. What you never know is how your
state of sanity is regarded by others.
Surprise you, does it? I had it on trusted
authority that a neighbour had entered
a state of dementia. Poor woman. She 
already has more than enough affliction
in her life. She also has a husband who
is devoted to her care. When she trundles
up and down the street for her daily outings
shoving her elaborate walker before her
there too is her attentive husband. She
has become the child they never had
in her old age, her face a dumpling of
smiles, smudged with ruddy cheeks
like that of an excited, happy child. She
loves life and he loves her, so they laugh
as they toddle up and down the street
where when we meet them her clever
tongue and sense of mischief clarify an
active and healthy mind. I'm not the least
bit surprised since a distant relative
surprised when I answered the telephone
blurted he'd heard I was suffering from
frontal-lobe dementia. If I am it's a mystery
to me that people I never see know what
I clearly do not. I repeat, lost your mind?

Adventure

The thing of it is, there is no
challenge, no mystery in what we
anticipate as predictable. Habitual
routine may be comfortable and even
practically useful in many ways but its
very recognition as a constant in our
lives removes the element of surprise
of excited senses. So it is with people
and no less so with our two little
companions, with us daily on our
rambles through the woods on trails
familiar and dear which though well
known still have the potential of
springing little surprises on us all
in seasonal nuances, the obvious
unpredictability of its flora and fauna
and the impact of weather conditions.
We make our pleasurable way routinely
along the trails all four of us, bipedal
and quadrupedal alike, sharing the
intimate moments of our togetherness.
Yet venturing off the proverbial beaten
track to explore a forest unfamiliar
with its own unique flora and fauna
elicits a spark of excitement that grows
into a frenzy of madcap activities, two
little dogs on the berserk, chasing,
tussling, challenging, running amok
drunk on the elixir of adventure.

Monsters Among Us

Strange, and frightening is it not
that the hissing serpent insisting on
due notice -- or is that notice due --
slithers into the subconscious demanding
of those willing to submit to its indecent
will the commitment to become an object
of notoriety in the search for the kind of
fame we know more accurately as infamy.
History lists these human monsters as
anomalies of an unnatural world that
the well-adjusted and normal among us
shrink from in horror. That those whose
lives these atrocity-driven deviants also
become touched by the derangement of
purposeful existence marks them as
hapless standbys whose unusual fate 
is deplored and mourned, in an type of
fame that no one would choose, if they
could. The psychopath imagining himself
the lord of existence takes care to plan
and to arm himself appropriately, seeking
the most advantageous height from which
like an all-powerful deity, to rain his death
dealing arms down upon the masses of
helpless victims who could never have
imagined their plight would merit banner
headlines rimmed in funereal black.

They Are Unalike Us

You know them. We all do. They're
like you and they're like me. But are 
they really? They may instinctively 
know they are not and in so knowing 
recognize it is in their best interests
certainly not in ours to behave as they 
know they should and they would if 
they were other than how and what
they are. For the most part their 
distinguishing features are held in 
abeyance as social deviants for their 
deviance from what we consider normal
may simply be an aversion to the social 
construct of acceptable convention. 
For this they can be forgiven. Yet
certain moral and ethical constraints
must be in place to protect all of us
from the implacably monstrous hatred
of some of us. Despite which security
on occasion goes astray when tendencies
to psychopathy break lose from their
self-imposed restraints and the grotesque
horror of destruction and human sacrifice
sends us reeling in fear and dismay. No
one related to the hate-demented killer
had any idea he had it in him and
no one could recall other than his
penchant for avoidance he might pose
a violent risk like the psychotic attack
when ten minutes was all it took to
kill 50 unfortunates and wound another
500 whose existence he found so 
unnecessary and beyond irritating.

The Tree

Endowed with a noble and notable
presence it is an obvious aristocrat
among its peers, its great girth and
stature a living testimony to nature's
creatures attaining the height of their
promise in the fullness of time. A
pinnacle of grace as a sentry, an
unqualified presence of stillness and
perseverance; in its adolescent years
other adolescents nailed boards to its
even-then massive trunk enabling them
to clamber upward in an ambition to
reach its spire. Those boards now 
occupy a height where its spire once
dominated the forest canopy, remote
and as out-of-reach as the aloof, proud
pine itself, a symbol of endurance within
a challenging atmosphere of wild
weather and stolid determination. Yet
perfection eludes this specimen of
nature for deep within its psyche a
war raged, its calm exterior at odds 
with the equilibrium eluding its inner
self. This pine with its massive trunk
developed no fewer than three great
leaders, each struggling to touch the sky.

Mass Psychosis

We appear to have reached saturation
leading the news media to scour the
alternate planets of their febrile minds to
discover stories that will really grip the
attention of their audiences. This may not
be the result of information hysteria but
possibly the thread has been pulled too taut
and is in danger of snapping given the
utterings and dialogue exchanges emitted
by those we have placed in positions of
authority to act and speak for us. Their
world stage performances have been somewhat
less than impressive and we tire of wincing
at what has been wrought and wrung from
the upper echelons of power. Little wonder
then that with earnest tones emphasizing
the vital importance of their focus, news
lingers on !celebrity! figures bypassing
their human failures and finding favour
in serious discussions on the integrity and
attraction of the latest iteration of space
drama, the intrigue of units displayed in
Internet fixation on love conquering the
evil of despair in graspable installations
along with the unfortunate presence in
unstable society of ghouls and clowns
intruding upon the peaceful-minded though
few relate them to the subconscious striving
to re-imagine an existence fraught with the
failure of humanity to address its destiny.