Her Story

You stop briefly to watch as several
goldfinches loop through the air into the
forest beyond the trail, then forge on, a
beautiful cool and breezy day, shafts of
sunlight penetrating the forest canopy to
throw bright warmth on the forest floor
picking out the presence of bright orange
fungi here and there among the shrinking
green vegetation on this late summer day.
It's a serene landscape, only the sweet
twittering of the birds and they're soon
gone. Then a sound difficult to decipher
but it could be a pileated woodpecker in
the distance, its manic cry distinguished
though it sounds harshly staccato and
electrified and on comes a rotund woman
hat perched over straggly grey hair her
broad face split in a wide smile, the
radio strapped on her waistbelt the
source of the crackling. She stops. You
stop. Yes, it's a wonderful day, aren't we
fortunate to have this green landscape to
ourselves, so peaceful and eye-appealing.
Her deeply creased face turns serious as
her voice takes on the self-assurance of
those deeply committed to themselves
imparting to a stranger the story of her
life, that she has always been taken for
someone much younger than her age
while her younger sister looks older than
her age and you step back just as you're
taken aback, wordless, politely lending
your ears to someone who appears to need
ears attuned appreciatively to her story.

 

Guiding the Universe

Where there was nothing, a desolation
of emptiness when not even time existed
in a primordial blank slate Nature felt it
timely to invent herself as the locus of 
creation and existence became the presence
in her cradle of life as she mounted countless
experiments modelling a universe where
the vacuum filled at her punctilious
direction her attention riveted on micro
and macro designs, none too obscure 
none beyond her fecund imagination 
in the formulation of being and the
formation of all that exists. As a steward
of her creation she tends to everything
while bestowing upon each of her
things complexity and the capacity to
stir themselves in action and reaction.
Her gifts to her creations uncountable
and precise all answering to her profound
and great vision of establishing something
where nothing had prevailed. Creation
has its beginning but no ending, all her
diverse materials assigned their tasks.
Her ultimate driver of creation multi-
dimensional and given to use, conservation
expiration and reuse reflecting her divine
commitment to endless felicitous invention.


 

 

Caught Out

These be the sweltering dog-days of summer
when nights fester in high humidity and
people toss sleepless in their beds at night
seeking shelter from the merciless sun in
daylight hours and when a week of skies
shrouded in murky clouds hurled forward
and backward by violent winds that barely
lift the heat from the atmosphere threaten
rain and violent thunderstorms. Leading us
to take precautions when setting out on our
woodland hikes through forest trails; despite
the overwhelming closeness of the moist heat
trudging with backpacks of raingear and
invariably returning dry for no storms nor
rain interrupted our sojourn in the forest.
Leading us to the reassurance that despite
appearance to the contrary we could set out
under dark clouds shutting out the light of
the day sans raingear only to find, deep in
the embrace of the forest thunder rumbling
deeply above and soon rain tumbling out
of the sky anxious to penetrate the broad
green canopy of the forest for even that
canopy cannot withstand the force of torrential
rain. Yet though rain did fall, it was not that
accompanying the fierceness of the battle
above and we discovered exiting the forest
that the world outside its confines absorbed
the brunt of the storm as we emerged dry.

Man The Wise

Gifted with cognition and intelligence
we are cursed with emotions. Our thoughts
enable us to interpret and analyze to plan
and to create, to manipulate the riches
available in our environment, yet we are
subservient to our instincts overriding
reason, leading us to acts of unreasoning
cruelty to one another for embedded deep
within our subconscious are the visceral
reactions born of tribal affiliation and the
inhumane grip of jealousy, hostility and
greed leading the forefront of our actions
through survival's prod toward acquiring
all that promote existence staving off
threats of scarcity while depriving others
of the wherewithal to survive for this is
the primeval within, the murderous rage
that others may presume to advantage
themselves with the earthly attributes that
are meant to sustain us, not the despised
and feared 'other' whose existence is that
of a threat to our own. Humanity is its
own threat of annihilation from within. 

Monarch, Hummingbird

These, among nature's inventory of creation
are marvels of spectacular beauty and
exquisite frailty. Yet nature endowed them
with an astounding capacity to endure
and to migrate seasonally travelling
thousands of miles in their journeys
despite perceived frailty and minuscule
dimensions. As the filaments spun by a
spider have amazing tensile strength so
too does the ingrained aptitude of the
butterfly and the most perfect of the
avian specimens endowed by nature in
its distinctive backward-forward hovering
in the beating of its tiny wings, beak
immersed in the trumpet throat of a
flower the perfect pairing of beauty; the
bleeding hearts offering up their nectar.
A symbiosis of offering and collecting.
The Monarch, truly queen of all her
tribe cloaked in royal hues of the sun
blazes her orange-specked wings in a
scintillating swoop through the air to
settle graciously on the bright pink throne
of the coneflower, nature's gifts to her
very most special creatures as they prepare
to embark on journeys escaping winter
ravages, tiny forms crowding the sky.

My Country 'Tis Of Thee

In this vast northern country of my birth
summers are too short and winters too long
yet in the northern hemisphere this is as it
should be. The richness of the landscape in
this great, broad land is unparalleled from
its great plains, its multitude of lakes and
powerful rivers, huge tracts of boreal forest
and endless mountain ranges -- where three
oceans lap the shores of this land there is all
required to sustain the lifeblood of a nation.
In this land of arable soil producing a plenitude
of crops to feed the country's population there
is yet an abundance to be sent abroad and to
share the excellence of foodstuffs whereby
civilizations thrive. The window of growth
for vegetation is set in nature's tablet of
seasonal opportunity after which all becomes
sere and unyielding as fierce winter winds
storm mightily across prairies and the summits
of those mountain ranges in raging snowstorms
and freezing rain wrapping its deathly cold
into an immobilized landscape of pristine
white like the garments of the dead. In
summer, though, in summer all thrives as
birds reverse their migration and foliage
returns to green splendour and the rituals of
birth, death and rebirth revolve to nature's call.

The Dilemma in the Enigma

Verily, life is full of the pleasure and the
agony of surprises, and one certain way to
have one's fill of both is parenthood. What
greater aspiration could conceivably rest in
any loving man and woman's future than to
bring children into this fascinating of all
possible worlds. Those that are fecund have
no problem with the issue. And those who
struggle, do so mightily using all possible
means at their disposal, for what other purpose
do fertility clinics have but to ensure that those
who desire children do indeed have them? And
in the having know the heights of bliss and
the depths of bleak despair. Bright, lovingly
dependent inquisitive children will always
be the pride of their parents' existence, and
those parents want little from life beyond
the assurance of their children's happiness.
Even if it costs them their own. The puzzles
of parenthood are many and take their start
in the sacrifices made for one's own ending
with the agony of not knowing what might
have gone wrong. The devilish details of
childhood insolence, adolescent spurts of
independence and the stalking mischief of
alcohol, drugs and partying are what we know
as 'normal' acting-out behaviours familiar
enough to be set aside in shock value for the
offspring whose insistence they were assigned
the wrong gender demands rectification. It
it beyond strange that society now augmented
by expert professionalism in psychiatry and
human behaviour genuflect in defence of
sacred human rights entitlements all too
oddly leading to self-mutilation and suicide. 

God of War

He rampaged bloodily through the

pantheon of Roman antiquity,

Mars bellicose and triumphant,

leading the never irenic battalions of

Rome's fearsome military might,

their phalanxes, their helmeted,

breast-plated, shielded centurions

and their raging chariots and swords

to lay waste to all those nations

defiant unto death against the might

of Rome. How could they possibly

know of a distant planet that 

served the Universe by experiment

through incomprehensible orders

of magnitude far surpassing in time

the era of our own ancient mould -

Mars unleashed a nuclear storm 

of absolute annihilation, destroying

all life in its dread demonstration

of the very nature of intelligence

coursing through an advanced

civilization ...  An eternal memory?

Ritualized Courtesy

It is our comforting refuge this garden
we have tended for so many years of our
lives together, a secret place of serenity
where nature's gift of beauty extends
before our eyes in a texture of sensuous
relief, the perfume of flowers and the
shapes and colours arresting attention
speaking to our aesthetic of incomparable
loveliness of form and appearance in an
exquisite miniaturization of a perfect
landscape. Our intimate Eden welcomes
an array of visitors feeling quite at home
among the trees, shrubbery and flowering
plants, needing no permission to be there
knowing they are welcome as they pick
among the offerings left out for their
delectation each day. Raccoons and
rabbits in their nocturnal surveys while
daytime brings along chipmunks, squirrels
cardinals, doves and crows all on their
very best social behaviour courteous to
one another taking what they will as they
wander, leaving the garden tidy, intact
a ritual long rehearsed and perfected.

Their Story

Young and passionately in love, as much
with one another as they were with the
freedom and discovery adventure offered
them, they determined to dedicate their lives
to the landscapes of the world and the
opportunity to meet those who peopled
those exotic places that they might never
see remaining anchored to typical Western 
values of a frenetic working future and the 
possessions their friends so urgently 
aspired to. They foresaw to a life free to
wander, vowing not to leave all modern 
technology behind as they posted photos and 
their exhiliaration viewing landscapes of 
majesty and beauty magnified by villages
perched on mountainsides residents shyly
welcoming them, crossing borders and
experiencing life with a meaning and
intensity yet sweet serenity they had never 
imagined might be theirs to share. They wrote 
of the simple folk who shared their food
if not their language, of the courtesies and 
the smiling children and their comfort with 
life. Posting on Instagram and Facebook  
they kept family and friends updated. Up 
to the day they came met other lifestyle 
pilgrims the group filing along a steep 
mountain path chatting nonchalantly between 
themselves at peace with the world. Suddenly
those euphoric postings ceased. A villager 
witnessed the violent umbrage of religious 
zealots at the presence of unbelievers 
taking it upon themselves to dispose of the
strangers' presence as their  holy scriptures 
are known to command of the faithful.

The Urban Woods

In that neighbourhood the geology is such
that it is impregnable to suburban/urban
'development' for the deep and extensive ravine
comprising a great, wide swath of the area is
also a natural storm run-off and domestic
construction would be too costly an investment
to realize a profit, so those fortunate enough
to live in direct proximity to the forest which
the ravine sustains realize in its presence a
treasure. One that scrubs the air they breathe
that hosts countless animals and a vast variety
of vegetation, venerable pines that withstood
the era of logging and which once stood close
to settler-era farmland long since moved on
to make room for said development. Leaving
communities of urban dwellers to migrate to
the outer limits of the teeming city where
most of the population view the forest from
afar, in appreciation of its autumn beauty but
impatience with the nocturnal presence of foxes
rabbits and raccoons seeking out food waste
and the antics of squirrels rooting about in
their gardens. That small number of residents
who make the forest their daily destination do
so knowing how irreplaceable the forest is to
the quality of life and from its presence take
comfort that there is much worth preserving.

The Magic Forest

Guess what! You don't really need a
tornado in Kansas to knock you into an
amazingly glowing green world, just await
a rainy day and enter a forest where the
summer canopy of the trees crowding the
woods provide shelter from the rain even
while on entering the way ahead appears
dark and uninviting. Muster your courage
and forge on and as the trees surround you
there it is, a translucently-lit interior that
mysterious transformation where the dim
rainy world outside is left behind and you
are within a green cathedral of growth
luminous with verdant shades where ripe
wild apples and blackberries shimmer
and on the forest floor gems vibrate in
bright hues with intriguing names like
jewelweed, fleabane, yarrow, pilotweed
Queen Anne's lace, and more, so many
others whose shadings and forms the rain
has brightened beyond belief, where tiny
goldfinches swoop through the branches
alongside nuthatches and chickadees softly
calling and you are there, in that most
arcane of all possible worlds of magic.

Memorial

The bare unadorned concrete as grey as
despair, its sharp angular lines designed to
convey the bleakly incomprehensible number
of victims comprising the toll of hatred in
the impenetrable desolation of spirit that
impels humankind's inhumanity to others
that are different, despised and persecuted
the memorial is a place for grim introspection
where thoughts turn to wholesale atrocity
and the lives that were sacrificed to the deadly
scourge of anti-Semitism, a beacon of hope
that the memory of the Holocaust would
help people understand the dread horror
that civilized nations could inspire through
hatred and in its message would serve to
warn and forestall future human carnage.
The memorial inspired in those careless with
history and committed to merchandising
and aesthetics of appearance how fitting
it would be to use the stark canvass of loss
and bereavement to showcase a couture
collection of alluring garments in a public
relations campaign certain to gain notice
and public acclaim for the cleverness of
the juxtaposition, and after all, only those
whose ethnic group and religion were
sacrificed on the altar of the final solution
would be certain to respond; and so be it.

In The Beginning

Out of the timelessly vast desolating
darkness of the universe swirling and
turning, tumbling and sweeping along
corridors of space where chemicals
and gases, inorganic matter and dust
gather and disperse, coalesce and explode
tumbling and tossing once spewed a
primal bacteria onto the cooling molten
Earth where it evolved over countless
aeons as mountains thrust through the 
Earth's crust and volcanoes spat fire
while the roiling atmosphere cooled
giving birth to a lifeform that would be 
the precursor to all lifeforms of vegetation
and animals, ancient birds of the air
reptiles of the land, fish of the sea then
mammals making their home in the
forests and oceans as the planet cooled
then heated then cooled again and 
humankind arose. Never do we think of 
ourselves as anything but nature's perfect 
creation the ultimate thinking machine 
capable of manipulating the bounty of 
the Earth to our own design. Having
conquered the land and the seas we
look toward space wherefrom we came
awaiting discovery and exploitation.
Then caution arises that the bacteria
so copiously colonizing our bodies 
might conceivably contaminate space
other planets and possibly the universe.

 

A Murder .. of Crows

As twilight cast its mystical serenity
over the landscape, a great flurry
of dark-winged juveniles swept
into the sky above the forest
canopy, calling and heckling
one another their voices
reverberating through the
otherwise-still forested enclave
where the heat of the summer day
had not yet abated, the densely
humid atmosphere of the
sweltering forest finding no
relief in the setting of the
sun fierce in its heavenly
throne. Such were their numbers
that the murder of crows circled
in swoops and sweeps trailing
one another so densely feathers
fluttered to the forest floor as
the birds assembled, reassembled
called their primacy of presence
the conquerors of forest and sky
this day in overwhelming numbers.

Diminished in Death

We know them as houseflies although
they are no one's idea of domestic pets, rather
disgusting pests gaining entry to our homes
bringing with them disease and pathogens
potentials for illness to strike and so we
react by attacking those creatures we view
as threats, for so they are, alighting instantly
on fecal matter and then seeking out our
food to forage on. Even our dogs largely 
responsible for the flies' entry making quick 
work of accompanying them indoors as they 
cleverly manipulate sliding screen doors
detest the presence of those buzzing flies
snapping and growling at the impertinence 
of their presence. Still, when food is kept 
intact and unavailable the flies' instinct is 
to depart the confines of a house flightily 
landing on windows and doors as though 
aware they lead outside to freedom. When 
we can we oblige their exit carefully sliding 
window or door to the open air to  rid 
ourselves of their presence. A pestiferous 
presence and good riddance but yet ... how 
often do we discover small black corpses 
collapsed in death on window or door sills
their frantic efforts to escape the prison they 
have invaded failing as they succumb to the
ultimate punishment for their ill-judged quest.

We Are...

As a blueprint of brilliant design the
peerless binary synchronization that
distinguishes the human brain and heart
represents that most ineffable of
mysterious masterpieces, a plan whose
attention to minute detail instructing
mind and body in the art of existence
exalting the maker and her product into
the realm of perfection a motivating
presence unseen, unheard, unimaginable
in the sweep and magnitude of her
power knows no equal. Science and 
matter will always remain elusive
elements of life directed to interact 
exciting the mind to discover its own 
existence. The brain, the seat of thought
emotion and individuality the essence 
of being, leaving the illusion of uniqueness
where the soul resides in a spirit of 
knowing itself as itself. Yet, does it? 
Does the brain in its incalculable aptitudes 
storing memory and knowledge lead us 
to channel our emotions, introducing our
thoughts to the convincing argument 
that there is the matter of free will and 
the exercise of judgement so that we are
the masters of our own destiny? Or are 
we carried along on the tides of affairs
and events overwhelming choice and
suffocating destiny, mere disposable 
elements of nature's bold experiment.

Generations

Long retired, many of the street's
original home owners whose children
have long since departed for their own
streets somewhere not too far from their
parents, remain in their homes happy to
live where memories flood the rooms
they shared with sons and daughters.
From time to time someone would sell
and in moved new families with young
children and the street became a fixed
yet fluid blend of young and old where
the elderly maintained friendly bonds
with those they know as neighbours
and friends and the new residents fail
to notice the presence among them of
the elderly, much less that of their peers.
The long established residents marvel
at the number of family separations being
racked up steadily leading to one-parent
families and the leftovers linking with
others who bring their own children
along to visit before eventually there is
a consolidation and one larger family
occupies the home reflecting a social
contract completely unfamiliar to one
half of the street's residents of the other
half's accommodation to life's exigencies.

Destiny

Oh the wonder in a child's eyes newly
opened to the world and all its mysteries
of being and seeing and feeling without
end.That determination to forge through
the cautious denials of those preparing
them for independence who place obstacles
before them struggling to advance toward
whatever is fascinating and forbidden for
how will they ever learn? Their minds in
ferment they enter that world of wonder
knowing it beckons them and being there
will make their existence explicable to
their naive minds with their expectations
open to experience even as their thoughts
turn dark in the realization slow to arrive
but inevitable that what lies before them
is a multi-branched path trodden by all
that predated their presence on earth and
the choices they make in direction and
challenge in the kind or belligerent presence
of fortune will dictate whether their era
of childish excitement to meet and advance
their futures will have gained them deep
insight into the nature of humankind and
its long relationship with existence so
confusing to so many, eluding opportunities
and confidence, uncertain which direction
promises to promote their elusive destiny.

My Good Fortune

Balancing luck, the good and the bad
is a matter of perspective is it not? Take
for example, my father, a homeless orphan
at the age of twelve, wandering the mean
streets of Warsaw alone but for the company
of others like himself and there were others
like himself whom a compassionate welfare
group eventually took notice of; boys
without homes, scrambling for food to
keep themselves alive. It was arranged for
those boys of poor fortune/good fortune to
be shipped to Canada to work as indentured
farm hands until their passage was paid
through their farm labour. And then they
were free and the bonds between those boys
never broke, a filament of loyalty and love
that lasted throughout their lives even as
they matured, made a life for themselves
had families of their own and formed a
group always looking out for one another.
None ever held a grudge or blamed the
world and its unfairness for their misery
and loss. They believed the world would
soon become a better place. It did, for them.
The best fortune lay in the fact that they all
Jewish boys, left Poland before the outbreak
of the ghastly, demonic Second World War.

Inheritance

In tutoring his gifted young pupil no doubt
Aristotle imbued in that preternaturally
mature Macedonian an obligation to his
fellow man, to use his endowment of
creative intelligence and ruling inheritance
to become a wise and forgiving tyrant for
the advance of Greek civilization among the
primitive Eastern hordes he set out to pacify
and bring under his vast ruling orbit to
complete what his father Philip set out to
accomplish. Installing satrapies loyal to
the Hellenistic ideal as his vast armies set
out to support Alexander's ambition to
enlarge his dominion he found in ancient
Bactria resistance to his occupation first 
in Persia unseating its king of kings in a
sweep of geography encompassing that
empire's holdings to absorb into his own in
a measure of absolute domination none
others might challenge. But challenge they
did in unconventional warfare by war lords
resentful of foreign interlopers and what
then ensued was the drenching of the land
deep in the blood of Bactrians, Macedonians
and Greeks alike as Alexander's armies 
swept through the mountainous terrain and
deserts taking villages, towns and cities and
sparing no lives in a paroxysm of vengeance 
that his destiny to rule the world met resistance.
How world events repeat themselves time and
again, with that same bloodied land invaded
from time immemorial to the present, where
war lords and the Taliban now rule, outwitting
and outmanoeuvring the armies of modernity
in that archaeological treasure of a land that
has seldom known peace where the bones of
humanity settle and sink deep in its blood
drenched geology, never to be pacified.

On Guard For Thee

While the complexity of human nature is 
undeniable there are some elementary issues 
notwithstanding so entirely predictable no one 
needs a degree in advanced psychology to 
forecast just what outcome will be produced
when an impulse to cast abroad how manifestly 
wrong customs are elsewhere in their punishment 
of critics of national politics crushing the human 
spirit in defence of national policy when the 
critic's executive political station pits them 
against their counterpart of a nation with whom 
the former has diplomatic and trade relations in
the global sphere of political accommodation.
Long past the legendary 'shoot the messenger'
was put to rest, confidence that leaders of 
nations place credence in the efficacy of 
diplomacy when heritage, religion and custom
deviates, this became the mode of contact 
through international affairs of state that support 
discussion and rapport in lieu of inciting to 
conflict. A successful transition toward universal 
civility. With the advent of social media and 
the compulsion to state one's unequivocal 
position on the side of the angels, otherwise 
quasi-intelligent leaders see fit to unburden 
themselves now of criticisms against their 
international counterparts on a social platform 
invented by the avian species, as a children's
taunting and flaunting game. A fun process of 
denigration and offence resulting in avoidable 
hostilities and threats of dark reciprocation 
when less than adroit signals of virtuous 
superiority are published, gain notice and a 
storm of vituperation showers through the 
media in a regression to fraught affairs of 
state and international comity dissolves.

Night and Day

Dusk knows its time and place and when
to defer to the darkness of nightfall
withdrawing while lending itself to the
atmospheric descent into hushed silence.
A silence shattered ever so rudely by a
hoarse clatter of crows despite the hour
and the expectation that only nocturnal
creatures prowl lending credence to the
supposition that an owl has enraged those
birds who had embraced sleep perhaps by
foraging too near their resting place
arousing their territorial umbrage as much
as their fear of the great owl's talons in
too close contact with their vulnerability.
This day the searing heat of the summer
sun baked the forest as fierce burning
rays of that orb sat high above the canopy
and burst through interstices among the
branches of pines and oaks in a mixed
forest of conifers and deciduous trees
descending into a vast ravine where 
wildflowers were shriveling in protest
and small animals sought comfort in hidden
nests waiting for the furnace to abate
and the day to slip into the cool escape
of night when rolling thunderstorms 
might justify their arcane trust in nature.