Defying Death

Imagine a cold winter day with a
sharp wind in a forest whose trails are
ribbons of sheer ice and all about snow
is gently falling, a vision of frigid delight.
Imagine two small black dogs, miniature
companions, sibling male and female
suddenly animated with the approach of
two large, very large members of that
same species whose weight is ten times
that of theirs but who nonetheless snarl 
and leap forward prepared to launch an 
attack. Benevolent fortune smiles on
the awkward communion and all depart
unscathed. Imagine a clear, cold blue sky
above, ice-and-snow-glazed mountains
below and in the intermediate two free
fall adventurers sans parachutes spiralling
downward from the impossible height of
space garbed in wide-webbed suits
moderately impeding the speed of their
descents, radio contact with a helicopter
door wide ajar meant to scoop them into
its belly in a spectacular aerial 'catch'
enabling these extreme adventurers to
cheat death and extend the genetic pool.

Octogenarian

Been quite a day, hasn't it? Started
in quite a promising mood early on.
Though cold, a light snowfall began
the day and soon enough that changed
and out came the sun to melt that new 
snow, revealing once again the slick icy
surface covering the landscape. Still,
undeniably beautiful to look upon.
Sheer pleasure in a winter's day, then
the nagging reminder the order of the
day and routine would be disrupted
since a doctor's appointment was 
scheduled, damn! Still, you didn't 
mouth that word even once when your
very good doctor quietly and precisely
interpreted all those tests and reports
from the specialists he had arranged
you see. You see, you felt yourself to
represent a paragon of aging gracefully
mentally alert, physically energetic
an absence of aches and pains so very
unlike others of your venerable age.
That conceit crumbled amazingly in
the wake of the litany of failures so
professionally enumerated for your
edification, requiring yet more tests
and specialists to probe and peer at
the crumbling edifice that holds your
peerless brain aloft. Just too precious
by half that before departing your blood
pressure was checked, and elevated.

Galahad Mine

I never did experience a fear of flying
and nor did I ever need a revolution
to instill in me independence. Fear of
falling now, that's another thing altogether.
But Galahad lives. He has, in fact, lived
with me for the past 60 years. Once a
gallant youth, we all grow into distant
maturity and he no different as we paced
life together. In summer we garden and
take long, leisurely walks in the woods
together, he and I, and nor are we either
one of us an accessory to the other. In
winter we take long, leisurely walks in
the frozen woods through those trails
meandering deep through snow and ice. 
Fear of falling? With good reason for I 
have now and again. But he is at my side 
and steadies my gait, walking me through
the icefields of life and bringing me whole
again to another summer this season of
our lives in our binary tandem of life

The Occasion

In the dead of winter. The occasion
was a spontaneous gift that life
sometimes offers, a radiant day of
unblemished beauty and invitation
to revel in the glory of a winter sun
beaming through a cloudless sky onto
the landscape of an urban forest
calling to those fortunates living nearby
to clad themselves and their winter
weary companions and hail nature
from within her treed salon signalling
gratefulness for a day without raging
winds, frostily weeping skies and
breath-taking cold. And so they
came with their toques and their
mittens, their exuberant dogs and
their pleased expressions on sighting
friends and neighbours all somehow
signalled to leave their climate
protected homes and forge toward
the forest to revel in its invitation to
stroll along the icy trails, slipping now
and again, quipping and laughing in
unison at the beatific glory of winter.

I Remember

I remember a child vaguely aware of her 
parents' hushed conversations, a topic unfit 
for children's emerging consciousness.
I remember the dark gloom of apprehension.
I remember the anguish in my parents' eyes
and voices, the hopelessness, the futile anger.
I remember that child now older beginning to
realize she was of a people being slaughtered
by a malign force of unstoppable magnitude. I
remember the forlorn disbelief that human
beings could be be slated for death and that
no human agency made an effort to intervene.
I remember searching among my father's papers
turning pages in strangely published booklets
with words a child was unable to decipher
but which held a stark reality that revealed
itself nonetheless of dread and disaster. Oh, I
remember remonstrating with my father that
what he and his friends feared could not Daddy
possibly happen and I remember that hollow
look in his eyes, my mother's frantic tears. I
remember, I will never forget a world unmoved 
by the plight of these distasteful people who 
must after all have committed some evil to 
earn such contempt and violent institutionalized 
retribution. Oh, you don't recall? You might not
since the world at large doesn't appear to have
been very affected. I have on the other hand 
lived a long lifetime of remembrance.

Conquest

Sun claimed this winter day as its very
own, defying the moodily dark days that had
preceded it to rumble their overcast back into
the open blue it positioned its chariot aloft to
dominate. Monopolizing the landscape above
and below shafts of sunlight glance, dance
and glimmer through the bared branches of
the forest canopy. Its brilliant yet restrained
warmth coaxes icy snow burdening cedar
boughs to drip to the forest floor. The
mounded, undulating floor of the forest
purely white crusted with the transparency
of ice, brilliantly yet softly glistening under
the cascading illumination of that moving orb.
Sharp gusts of wind penetrate the fastness of
the frozen forest unable to send cascades of
snow dusted on evergreen boughs in arcane
opaque white veils masquerading as ghosts
relinquishing that formulaic failure of snow's
transformation to frozen water which only the
sun and the sun alone can return to its source.


 

Species Survival

Using the expedient of a mass psychosis
with which half of her species were endowed
nature felt she had solved the problem of
potential extinction through assurances of
biological procreation, setting aside the
precaution of fine-tuning  the mechanism
which haunts the other half of her species.
The tool it appears after usage from its
primal blueprint to the present is plagued
with design flaws; that primitive urge has
been hardily resistant to linkage with the
brain's expeditions into enlightenment where
social graces and emotional nuances signed
a contract sexual urges neatly sidestepped.
The undercurrent of male entitlement and
female acquiescence so deeply engrained
it brooks no dissent. Women complicit to a
degree succumbing to masculine demands
for availability simmered in resentment of
that pathological slavery submitting their
bodies, stilling their humiliating psychic
bruises but just as a sleeping volcano's
heat burbles from below until pressure
explodes magma from its core to its cone
so too has society now erupted in a fusion
of outrage and refusals felling reputations
and professions from all corners of society.
This is not revenge, though women have gathered 
as avenging angels, but it is consequential.

MisAdventure!

The nest has been long emptied and the
two sibling puppies, small and precocious
late-life offspring bringing new life and
happiness to a household of two have no
real obligations toward their doting 'parents'
to behave any less obstreperously than did
their own children that long-ago time in
their personal history. That old adage that
'a lesson well learned is never forgotten'
certainly fails to apply to all experiences
where fear has not resulted in avoidance
given the unaware repeat on a woodland
ravine's winter walk where  insane weather
transformed snow packed on hillsides into
slick ice-topped mounds masquerading in
the minds of two little dogs as innocent of
danger. Just the day before the ice-slicked
hills had propelled one pup helplessly down
and away to finally land at the long hill's
termination point, while today the same
adventuresome pup found himself sliding
precipitously toward the raging creek at the
bottom of another hill, halted momentarily
by tall grassy stalks protruding from the ice.
The rescue mission commenced, crashing
through the ice, falling akimbo but still
managing to grasp halter and pup to effect
an affectionately grudging haul to safety.

The Occasion

He is delicately solicitous of the old woman
reminiscent of Old World courtesy perhaps
a lingering ancestral memory deep within
the confines of his inner self of which he is
hardly conscious, but she identifies his concern
and is touched, though she admits to nothing.
Young he may seem yet he is a practised
medical technologist and she is a patient the
relationship one of professional dependency
yet tinged with that curious social contract
pitting youth against age and the propensity
of the aged to feel their entitlement to probe
and ask questions unrelated to the matter at
hand, and so he patiently replies, he masters
three languages. It is his pronounced accent
his name Sergei despite his professional manner
that belies awkwardness that spurs her to remark
her mother was proficient in many Eastern
European languages. This woman born in the
West accustomed to the social contract most
familiar to her of aloof disinterest of the other
was interested and questioned the medical
protocol being deployed, the undifferentiated
to her eyes visuals flashing on the screen 
continually diverting him from his concentration
to momentarily assure, describe and placate
her curiosity no doubt breathing a visceral sigh
of relief at her departure, alternately sighing in
fond memory of a grandmother barely recalled.

Taking Stock

So is this it, the sum total of a life? Closing
on 60, divorced, overweight and anxious
four offspring with children of their own
and no one to communicate with, a lonely
existence. Almost. Aside from the fact that at
this late age you're an orphan. He knew you for
for what you were back then, a ferret-faced 
kid with with a sneaky agenda he called 
"weasel" and didn't you resent him? Long 
since alienated from your only sibling, an
irremediable split between you and your 
sole aunt, who is left then? When the ache
of nostalgia and the creeping sense of alone
stalks the plain of your arid plaintive mind
you dial his number, one lost man entering
his elder years pleading for the patient good
nature of a relative to relieve the abandonment
that seizes you. The pump primed, a name
or event triggers an outpouring of memory
not your own but whose perspective slants
toward yours and you feel an immense wave
of rescue that inflates your sense of self in an
oblivious world, and all is forgiven, uncle.

Do You Remember?

Oh yes, I remember that child. The one
with the big brown eyes and that lost look
that echoed from those orbs, a kind of vacancy
like someone in search of an elusive goal.
Melancholy throbbed from within that child.
I know, I know her intimately. I was that child.
The one who wandered the schoolyard alone
and friendless. In her mind there was another
child, a child like her. She knew he was there
she just had to find him. Or he her. She was
not a good student. Teachers seemed to ignore
her presence. She found them cold, not the
least bit interested but in their rote demands.
And she failed them all. It was books she
craved. The books she read were too advanced
for a child, but no matter. What she failed to
completely understand something within
reasoned her into the role of teacher and she
taught herself to understand. She became an
avid collector of words. That was her unending
consolation. Before too many more years of
aloof contemplation passed she did find him.
Her counterpart in loneliness and as library
fixated as she. They shared long silent walks
comfortably, no longer lonely and as time went
on no longer children. If there were any notable
differences, physiognomic or psychological
they absented themselves and they were one.

Dearly Departed

For all we know -- and we cannot, in this
lifetime know -- the angel we call Death
in invested with the authority to herald the
unsuspecting into the world they recognize
as one they visit constantly, a dreamworld
in their imagination but in reality another
existence entirely. For all we know, and we
cannot, in this world we know so intimately
recognize this would be a state of existence
other than our own, but completely our own.
Imagine, if  you will, Death introducing
Albert Einstein the world's preeminent
theoretical physicist to the brilliant mind of
Leonardo da Vinci the world's most masterful
creative mind, inventor, artist, tortured soul.
They would have much to discuss, would
they not? From the absurdity of their
heights of ability and knowledge superior
to all of their peers to their very human
condition, quite alike all of their peers and 
the bemused amazement that was theirs when
the place they knew as their alternate lives 
in a state of sleep, became their other
life forevermore in that unknown world.

Take My Hand ....

Habituated to the razor's edge of neurosis
we are a species that has become compulsively
addicted to the comforting presence of an
aura of security blanketing our thoughts and
motivating us to fixate on a small and exceedingly
powerful technology enabling contact with the
world at large in places where we will never
venture yet place our interests in stumbling
upon others equally dedicated to fulfilling
their destinies as herd animals led to the
trough of data consumption and social media
expressions finding within the consolation
of existence unavailable through the physical
presence of others like ourselves who spurn
with the horror of contamination intimacies
of contact and communication. Reality becomes
an intrusion, and we live our lives remotely in
dialogues through the empathetic intervention
of those like ourselves endlessly searching for
the reassurances of companionship that life itself
denies us, offering instead the fiction of finding
ourselves through electronic messaging; a means
reminiscent of protracted sleep where dreams
replace the predictable tedium of a life lived.

Blighted, Benighted

This is, undeniably, a personage of great
presence whose life is an open book of
amazing revelations, each page of which
he is inordinately helpful in displaying to
public curiosity for he is indeed one of a
kind. There are not many like this man who
has accomplished so much throughout his
life that so many others may have aspired
to but failed to meet the success that his
multifarious escapades have, gaining him
a rare celebrity status proving capable of
propelling him into the rarefied atmosphere
of power and wealth, and when that did
not suffice to his ultimate satisfaction on
he went to acquire that ultimate position
representing the authority of the most visible
and powerful seat on this planet Earth. For
the qualities that burnish his reputation are
diverse and plentiful, his mastery of ego
preening and boastful indulgence befitting
a world-class sexual predator, bully and
racist thug whose limited vocabulary strangles
strategies of communication geared to
shock and awe while indulging in perjury
threatening the balance of the Globe.

Her Radiant Smile

Each at opposite ends of their lives
the old woman, the young woman
encountered one another on a snowy
woodland path. It's all right, nothing will
awaken her, she spent the first month of
her life in hospital, heard noise around
her everywhere, assured the young mother
with a soothing smile. Her baby so tiny
hardly to be noticed snuggled against
her mother's breast inside the winter 
jacket zipped protectively, taking up
less room than she had while still in the
womb, noticeable then, as she is not now.
Beside them, a quiet little boy who 
preceded his sister by a scant few years
looking curiously about him at the 
noisy antics of the two small dogs 
accompanying the old woman. And 
she as though mesmerized unable to
wrench her eyes away from what stood
before her, captivating her mind conjuring
memory. The radiant young mother with
her two children and she reduced in years
with her two surrogate children her own
old enough to be the young woman's
mother with that appealing piquancy of
the mythic beauty of generations. They
parted, each musing over an impression.

Nature Invites

There you are, just look around you, is this
not supremely out of this world? You've seen
photographs of this haven't you? Well, here
it is, the real thing, a forested winter landscape
you can gorge your eyes on, any direction you
choose to focus on, it's spectacular, absolutely
riveting, and it's all yours since there's no one
else around, is there? Got your camera? Now
is the opportunity to grab for yourself your
very own personal view of nature's grandeur.
Think of it as the greatest show on Earth. And
there's nothing faux about it, it's the real thing.
Take a picture, take as many pictures as you
like, no one will object, there's no one here to
even notice. Oh, other than those two little
black specks up ahead. Hey, they're moving 
along pretty briskly aren't they, and looks like
they're little dogs. Wearing winter coats? Sad
an injection of human intrusion in this sacred
unspoiled setting. Oh, pardon! They're yours?
That's all right, then, take photos of them too in
this fabulous place where the snow has just
a moment ago  ceased its lazy descent, gentle
gusts of wind sending the soft, icy flakes against
your cheeks, and now pools of sunlight float
bright over tree masts and the forest floor.
Radiant perfection isn't it, truly, my friend.

The Meaning of Reality

Yes, it is a vexing and perplexing issue
to be sure, but the question when raised
how to succinctly describe countries whose
societies are based on tribal, clan, ethnic
and sectarian lines and whose leaders
invariably are sadistic tyrants bleeding the
economy, persecuting the people, setting
them viciously against one another with
one demographic favoured the others'
presence barely tolerated in a system of
inequity and favouritism, the fawning
unctuous supporters of tyranny living the
good life while others groan under the weight
of carrying the stifling load and earning none
of the profit. A country where poverty and
disease result in early death rescuing the
departed from the misery of military attack
from the regime and even earlier death. That
country which takes umbrage at the term
'third world', preferring 'emerging economies'
even though any economy that exists is
prone to institutionalized corruption, and a
regime that thunders the unfairness of it all
because colonialism is responsible for their
laggardly plight not they. Those of polite
conscience term these nations belaboured
by dysfunction, graft and brutality 'emerging'
while those not given to circumlocution
prefer the infinitely more direct 'shithole';
at the very least, a dank, dark black hole
where those unfortunate to live there exist
in a perpetual state of wretched apprehension.
Nomenclature is meant to refine, not to
define reality; otherwise it is evasion.

Winter Morning

Early morning
and we peer
through frosted windows.

The sky
a great shadow
shifts slowly
to living cobalt.

The moon
dangles
a silver sliver.

On the horizon
the preternatural
glow of dawn.

In the cedars
redpolls stirring.

From the houses
smoke lazily rising
mingling
with the chill.

The snow lies
a plush blanket
the earth interred.

We bate breath
awaiting the afternoon
of seasons.
A new arising.

 

The Chosen Ones

The Chosen Ones

Our world has been cradled in a profound stillness,
quiescent in expectation. Great care was taken in
preparation for this day, ornamented in the glitter
of bright and colourful baubles, and the exquisitely
sublime melodies of ages past provoking memories of
sadness and joyfulness. That which has been never to be
re-captured; that which will be to secure our futures.
A miracle has occurred albeit of brief duration, as
commerce has abruptly locked its doors bringing a
bereaved loss to some, relief to others, invested in the
spirit of the occasion which has occasioned a brief
harmony of spirit rare and treasured. Not a creature
appears to stir, not even a snow-suited child.

This is a wintry-cold day, the atmosphere
swaddled in snow and ice. The wind rattles
panes and stirs treetops in a wraith-like dance
their firm roots limit in perpetuity. Even the
great, bright orb of the sun seeks shelter behind
the haven of clouds this extraordinary day. This
brief hiatus in quotidian routine submitting
to annual commemoration of a divinely inspired
event is not universal in nature's calendar.
Elsewhere in this world the tragedy of fateful
destiny plays out as malevolent forces conspire
to wreak their deadly havoc in shades of blood
and gore, sacrificing human life to deadly terror.

Here, pacific emotions flow readily, absorbing
people in the rituals of familial love. Smoke rises
from chimneys of homes surfeit with holiday
cheer, abundant and rich feasts, and generous
gifts. There, across the world, foul dark smoke
rises from yet another suicidal-terror blast,
martyring one steeped in hatred, slaughtering
countless innocents haphazardly selected as this
day's chosen whose lives are obliterated, whose
families will mark the day in perpetuity to
the endless anguish of their mourning. 

 

 

 

 

Freakish Weather

Treasured and admired for her one-of-a-kind
voluptuous beauty, she is at one and the same 
time feared for her impetuous temper, her 
predilection for mischief her implacable 
disinterest in the dire consequences of the 
never ending episodic disasters following in 
the wake of her powerful servants' destructive 
forays into geological disturbances while all 
living creatures fend desperately for themselves 
to survive the outcomes of her imperious
orders upsetting the status quo, for stasis 
offends her and she must be amused at all costs. 
In all fairness to her influential power status 
like none other, she does indulge our wish to
behold the exalted wonders she controls and
we are grateful for that. On the other hand
our gratitude is irrelevant to her where her 
impulsive acts of disorder strains our regard 
as she flaunts her winter repertoire of wind
freezing rain and snowfall, polar temperatures
icefog and inverse-climatic mist and above
all the seesaw tricks of benign ratcheted to 
threateningly adverse as we are whipped 
between plus-and-minus atmospheric levels 
while the goddess of science and existence plucks 
flash-freeze conditions from her bubbling stew 
of incomparably freakish winter weather.

Deus Misereatur

Have a care and be aware of those you
may offend lest you be oblivious to the
existential carnage your carelessness may
bring down upon you. Lack of sufficiently
unctuous deference to those who preen
they have the ear of the Almighty has
the grim potential of a more monstrous
version of adolescent threats when the
son of a tyrant threatens hideous payback
if his elite presence fails to advantage
him in social situations refusing to take
cognizance of his ability to call down
the righteous wrath of a father in defense
of a piss-faced son. Nations choosing to
publicly shame a theocracy's indefensible
mangling of human rights on the altar of
sanctimony by expeditiously ridding
themselves of detractors offending the
executive powers of god's emissaries on
Earth have only themselves to blame when
the spirit of vengeance on behalf of the
godly overlord wreaks its menacing might
laying waste to the offenders using science
to forge technology's ultimate tool of mass
destruction in service to the lord of the Heavens.

All The Fitting News

Verily, to some he might resemble a
throwback to another age, a human
fossil of sorts, not meant derogatorily
by any means but perhaps with an earned
admiration for he is unlike others, to his
great credit. Despite the sorrows and
miseries that fortune has delivered his
way throughout his life this is a man
of great stoic fortitude from whom much
could be learned, if we but stopped long
enough to consider his value as a kind
and gentle man, a true gentleman of
whose type there is a scarcity in this world.
Had he been of the earlier era of which
his persona is a reminder, he might
have been a town crier, and every town
required its source of community news.
This earnest man of good disposition
as the chronicler of his times, as the
indisputable genius of the daily diary
Samuel Pepys would have it, scours
news sources avidly making it his bound
duty to apprise one and all of the latest
and most vital communiques worthy of
circulation at home and abroad, and he
modest though he is, became the pride of
the community, did they but know of his
undoubted existence, as I certainly do.

Forest Still Life

In the frozen white sanctuary of the
forest all is still, not a murmur sounds
no movement can be discerned
for there is none to be witness though
peace prevails and the forest has
the aspect of a cathedral with none
to absorb its atmosphere of calm. It
is an illusion for there are forces of
nature that bend the forest to their will.
A bitter winter wind gusts high above
the bare canopy shifting the latest
winter storm from crowns to forest
floor. Small creatures of the forest
their habitat under siege hibernate
yet remain attuned to vicissitudes of
prevailing temperature, wind and snow
briefly venturing from their havens
to tempt bitter fate. Here and there 
sudden errant icy breezes loose tufts
of billowy snow from laden branches
to tumble in an iridescent veil to the
snow below so lazily transparent yet
brief it could represent a magical feint.


 

Jihad and Jizya

The logic is simple enough. By defaming
and mocking Islam's holy scriptures
denying its sacred universality, regarding
the Prophet's call to struggle for the souls
of humankind the jihad of conquest as
dire, deadly violence it is clear by their
contempt that the West is at war with Islam.
The courageous martyrs who proudly 
sacrifice themselves through jihad have
dedicated themselves to the struggle only
to be besmirched as terrorists, impossible
nomenclature since Islam is a religion
dedicated to peace. In jihad martyrs are
tasked to enter the realm of war to guide
non-believers to the realm of peace and
righteousness in Islam. They will linger
in Paradise, their just heroic due and the
blasphemers calling on the faithful to
renounce the tide of Islam blooming across
the infidel world must be prepared to pay
their due. Under pretense of giving aid
the relentless assaults on Muslim cities
reducing them to rubble will not go
unanswered as the obligation of infidels
to rebuild what they have destroyed is
unassailable, a condition to which they
must become accustomed in the future.

Self-Preservation

You can if you wish, speak with her. Her
presence can be found here and there. She
is just like anyone else, a maturing young
woman steeped in university studies. As a
child she had a burning curiosity about the
world. Preternaturally she also had an odd
and admirable sense of justice even as a
child, so palpable her early grade-school
teachers remarked on it. She was praised
in high school for befriending those no one
else would bother with. She applied herself
to schoolwork but her friends knew her to
have a most acute sense of mischief, and
she laughed easily and readily. From an
early age she understood that law stood in
the way of chaos, and she conceived the
aspiration of becoming a criminal lawyer and
her studies then focused on human rights and
equality issues. Her language is impeccable
her writing skills impressive. She is who
she is, but she cannot be found on Facebook
on Twitter or any other social media site.
She is pleasant beyond words, engaged and
attractive and yes, her physical presence is
real despite which, since she cannot be reached
on Facebook is she an illusion, does she exist?