Rampant Mountain Stream

The light rain that insistently pattered its
way over the landscape could not account 
for the ferocity of the mountain stream as it
streamed and coursed down the mountainside
vehemently boiling and roiling its unopposed 
passage along the funneled trench in the 
rough-hewn granite carved in a primeval age
spuming and leaping in its mad dash from the 
gathered summits pointed skyward to reach
the river below, snaking through the forest 
greening the mountain. A late snow pack melt
and an inordinately rain-drenched spring 
conspired to flood the forest floor at the 
mountain's foot, scraping along the detritus 
of a climax forest, mist rising in the rain-
saturated atmosphere, thick plush green
moss upholstering the rockface as astride the 
the rapturous stream with its buoyantly
thunderous chorus, beech, hemlock, pines
and yellow birch rise, their leaf-and-needle 
mass a symphony of radiant green shades 
in a seasonal renewal, drenched with the
spray of the stream's boisterous passage.


 

The Flood

It descends in copious volumes
insistent, conspicuous 
and intolerable. Dark at mid-day 
an all-encompassing fog 
of grey mantles the landscape. 
Its opaque screen washing 
colour, objects and sight-lines
into obscurity. We become fatigued 
at the endurance and range 
of the downpour, drowning
our spirits in a miasma of despair
imagining the landscape 
dissolving, the soil carried off
into an ocean of rain
possessions destroyed
people carried off
homes ruined, entire towns 
abandoned to the unstoppable
excess. The future in abeyance 
as all about us becomes
beyond sudden, bedraggled
 unfamiliar and haunted. 
And still the rain descends.

The Border

There it is, the demarcation line 
where one country leaves off in
diplomatic-political deference to 
the claims of territorial imperative
of its larger distinctly powerful
neighbour. Smile on your face
and passport in hand meets the
indifferent disdain of the border
agent dismissing the tender
overture of your smile in favour
of professional dispassion. You
know of course uniforms strip 
people of their humanity since
whatever empathy for others they
may ordinarily muster dissipates
as you are ordered to respond to
peremptory queries, affirming
your identity as a distinctly foreign 
supplicant before the sanctioned
social aggression of the agent
who deliberately, cursorily with a
whiff of malice aforethought
rifles your possessions through
the current of tension and implied
power before tautly deigning to
wave you through and onward.

 

Mountain Hiking

There is a completely explicable urgency 
to the day, one of seven in a week
planned for outdoor excursions on
mountain trails, the kind of daily
expeditions as close to the raw landscape
of nature an urban dweller can fantasize
of. The national forest service weather
updates are unerring, leading ambitious
alpinists like mariners at sea to remain
so hugely dependent upon. An imperative
early start to the day meant to foil late
afternoon thunderstorms when dark clouds
stall obstinately over mountain peaks.
In the process of the ascent the sound
of the mountain stream spilling over
the granite mountainside, vultures riding
the wind glimpsed through the tree
canopy with dogwood and moose
maple in the understory, a confusion
of green fragrance assails the senses
awakening memories of times long past
as fewer rays of the sun penetrate the
forest, sky increasingly occupied by
swift-moving, densely-bruised clouds
and approaching the tree line with its
stunted pines and oaks the clear view 
of the summit attained, finally mounted
one lingers briefly, hastens to descend.

 

But What Did We Do?

Was it something we said in an
unguarded moment of pique? After all
we're allowed by the nature of our
natures to express frustration with
spring's excessive rain events
barely the opportunity to dry out
from the last storm before the next
blasts in. We've become mouldy in
the process and bitterly resentful 
at this Janus-faced spring promising
to rescue us from a hard winter of
icy demeanor yet just like a politician
she has her own agenda. Now it's
spring's departure officially as
summer enters. Our ears are plugged
unwilling to hear any pledges of
near normalcy in the weather
months to come. The seasons have
been on strike unwilling to do their
best claiming we under-appreciate
their fine intentions when we're
anticipating pride in presentation.
We're on the verge of petitioning
nature to send her seasons packing
but it seems she may have already
committed to that plan of action.

Damning The Evidence

Life was simpler then, certainly far less
contrived for you were what you were
and there was no confusion whether
boy or girl although admittedly there were
times when girls behaved like boys and
times when boys shared girlish traits
that were after all only human traits. This
girl knew when she first saw that boy
he would be hers forever. The boy agreed
and the years passed until they married
at a time in their lives when society now
views their age as consonant with childhood.
Life teaches raw lessons of harsh reality
and they learned to scrimp but never to 
save since the former is imposed by poverty
and the latter impossible in that condition.
They were joined, one after another by
extensions of themselves who turned out
to be complete and varied individuals
with no confusion over their binary state
though of course emotions and behaviours
run their course and overlap as is natural.
As the years passed so did society's contract
confusion setting in alongside demands
to compensate for perceived and actual
acts of oppression resulting in a confusion
of roles and identities when rejection of
what was taken for 'normal' became the
inevitable norm. The social contract has
since expanded with inclusivity and equality
and a whole range of optional choices now
confronting a population no longer taking
for granted biological evidence at birth.

Human Relations

How fragile an essence of being
is the human psyche where siblings
so close in childhood find reason in
maturity to erect defences against
continued intimacy, where children
grown to adulthood require the
'reminder' of a commercialized
public occasion to remember their
parents, where spontaneity in close
relationships is carefully metered
the pledge to open and frank
communication gone astray as 
simply too awkward under certain
circumstances best not explored.
Where perfect strangers find it in
them to console and to compliment
when friends, neighbours, intimates
hold their counsel. How strange it is
that upon meeting someone one is
never likely to come across again on
a trip to foreign lands, tongues
can be loosed and entire life stories
come spilling out of a relaxed mind
that ordinarily would never relate
this narrative to companions in trust.

Ill-Suited and Lost

What could have possessed her you ask? 
Haunted by that old adage if not now
when presumably, for she was already 
past her prime so to speak and he was there
so she abandoned expectations. Unpalatable 
as his persona is to you, she rationalized it
was now or never. Now became you see
forever, and all these years later this
pleasant woman with an outgoing
personality and the widest of smiles
ill matched to the sadness of her eyes
remains with her choice. He is after all 
sound of body if not in mind but then 
as a painful introvert whose social skills 
never existed control is everything, his 
own and what he exerts with no effort 
whatever on his long-suffering wife 
who now that he has retired is directly 
in the line of fire when her husband is 
particularly morose, so disgruntled he 
must relieve his tension and she is there 
to obligingly pay the price of her long
ago bargain with the devil she chose.

Notional Elixirs

With the monumental conceit that
characterizes humanity we think of
ourselves as brilliantly endowed with
a unique brain enabling humanity
throughout the ages to advance thought
and to manipulate our environment 
to solve mysteries of science and matter
delving into the nature of existence
from our humble planet revolving in
the immensity of the universe, one
solar system upon another, and there
we are wondering and struggling to
achieve knowledge. Yet not knowing
ourselves, frail creatures dissatisfied
with what and who we are, restive and
plaintive ever seeking a goal of bodily
perfection, learning the art of plastic
surgery, leaning on 'diets' to restore the
lithe muscular physiques of youth
endlessly experimenting with methodical
protocols to renew bodily functions
lapsing with age and infirmity leading
to infusions of stem cells and when we
can no longer fend off death contracting
for our heads to be placed in cryogenic
baths to await the future when life
long lapsed can improbably be restored.

Perspective

Some things in life just happen, it's
the way things work and you save
yourself a lot of grief by accepting it.
Take as an example, the exuberance
of discovery and joy of existence that
motivates puppies, like young children
to express their love of life in ways
that can be annoying to others and
elicit laughter and happiness in yet
others. If there's water about, children
and puppies both want to wallow in 
it taking their pleasure in feeling the
cooling water run down their legs
while they splash about and then run
toward the closest person to them for
a hug. If it's a dog splashing about in a
forested creek where runoff from farm
fields and bacteria from unknown
sources mingle with natural detritus
you're left as drenched as the dog that
leaped happily at you. Annoyed? well
tough, you can wash your clothing and
in the interim enjoy the spectacle of a
young dog beside itself with the miracle
of life. As for the tall, strapping fellow
the puppy next chose to share its joy
with, who kicked the offending overture
away so the puppy yelped with pain
the world is full of jerks who never
get over themselves and the puppy's
antics and trust in them shattered.

Behold!

This much we know of a certainty that 
there is no force in the poverty of imagination
whose industriousness, creativity and brilliance 
can be imputed other than to that of nature. 
The sheer inexplicable scope of nature's 
fecund plan of existence in its complex and 
mannerly harmony, its famed inextricable 
interconnectedness stands as a monument 
to her genius capable of producing a scale 
of varied existence from an amoeba to a 
gaseous giant circulating in the vast and 
infinite ocean of space she has kneaded from
the vacuum of nothing to the heavenly
bodies hurtling through the firmament
her creation all-encompassing. It spells a
wonder whose mind-binding magnitude
entrances those of her sensate creatures
for whom her blueprint of life animates
their destiny and for whom she duly created
habitat and opportunity to expand their
presence. Yet which and who among that 
vast array has the capacity to stand before 
their maker in the ecstasy of beholding her 
wonders, the exalted beauty within which 
we live and thrive but her creation defined 
as worshipping, emulating humanity?

Out of Africa

The world becomes an ever smaller
place, Africa less distant but no less
legendary and appealing in its vast natural
resources, its tribal peoples, its exotic wild
animals and rare and beautiful plants
even while lethally dread diseases prevail
as pathogens in their humidly hospitable
surroundings multiply and morph into
ever more deadly forms responding to
scientific formulations meant to cure and
to inoculate against their reign of terror.
Out of Africa came HIV/AIDs from
simian autoimmunodeficiency virus to
mercilessly level the ranks of the hapless
infected recognized in the West for its
killer status as it tore through terrified
populations. In Africa identified as a
scourge that whites inflicted on blacks.
Out of Africa comes Ebola another deadly
affliction to which the world body of
medical science responded with swift
efficiency to formulate healing drugs to
rescue the infected from the brink of
death. African tribes people afflicted
with diseases of lethal intent identify
them as deliberate infections spread by
health practitioners whose diabolical
plan is to annihilate Africans inciting
them to aid themselves by destroying
the equipment, drugs and volunteers
risking all to stem the tide of disaster.

Prim-i-tive

Ask Google if you are not fully certain
and this is what the response will be: 
relating to, denoting, or preserving 
the character of an early stage in the 
evolutionary or historical development 
of something: got that? We can go a
little further and think of primitive
thought and primitive action and it is
not too difficult to arrive at conclusions
whereby the source of those thoughts
and actions define themselves as entirely
anachronistic. The belief that women should
be subservient to men a primary example
another that non-Muslims by their very
existence as such are disposable. Which
transformed into action relies on such
forms of slaughter as beheading or
crucifixion. That Islam considers itself
an exalted crucible of peace in the
world while describing all non-Muslim
nations as states of war which Islam
is obliged by violent intervention to
transform to states of peace by conquest
and subjugation is not to be questioned
for doing so identifies the questioner
as an infidel deserving of death and
when that mode of disposal happens to
be inconvenient Muslims and their
complicit enablers affix the damning
label of Islamophobic, a term designed
to elicit public shame. Now, how then to
define primitive? In some particular
instances a condition never to be elevated
beyond its most rudimentary function
for psychopaths to shield themselves 
from close scrutiny behind a divinely
inspired protocol: conquest and murder.

 

That Jewish Sage

Would he be amused, bemused,
troubled or, knowing the frailties
of humankind, simply shrug and
carry on with his ministry, this
Jewish son, this prophet, this
philosopher-king, this lover of
humankind, with his empathy and
his mission to make of us all 
better humans than we have been, 
paying homage to the tenets of his 
teaching while failing to personally 
practise what he preached, expecting 
others to conform to the ineffable 
message believing themselves exempt 
from doing unto others in justice,
preferring simply to do unto others.
Would he, returning, rebuke us
all or chide himself for ever
believing that more might be
expected of humankind?

Human Progress

Honing to perfection the skills involved
in eye-hand coordination can certainly
be impressive. Think of renowned artists
past and present; scientists whose careful
manipulation of substances lead to vital
discoveries, of astronomers precisely
directing their instruments toward the
skies, and engineers whose measurements
and skills produce technological advances.
Swordsmanship, tennis, baseball, basketball
any number of skilled team sports whose
professional expertise we laud and praise.
Computer games? Where sedentary gamers
focus on screens where action games take
their undivided attention as they seek to
score: that kind of eye-hand coordination?
Where colleges and universities field teams
experienced and skilled as gamers intent
on mastering and finessing game-sports
not in an arena or a sport field but before
computers dedicated to game-playing whose
movements and repetition make of the 
players elders beyond their years in injury
with dedicated physicians using healing
arts to treat faltering bodies lacking the
challenge of wholesome physical challenges.
Oh yes, and millions worldwide watching
as games progress on special channels for
there are munificent winnings to be had as
the game producers raking in the cash from
sales of their addictive games gamble on a
tried-and-true formula of public relations
tied to public acclaim and popular embrace
of enfeebling one's body and brain for profit.

For Shame, Canada!

Such mendacious hypocrisy could not go 
unrevealed forever, Canada. Now the world 
is aware that mild-mannered Canada despite 
its vaunted reputation for fair inclusivity and 
punctilious recognition of human rights
offering equality of opportunity to all is an 
outright sham. Canadians, it has been revealed 
through an internal study struck by the federal 
government to research the damning issue 
of missing and murdered Indigenous women 
and girls is a racist, degenerate society whose
crimes against Indigenous women and girls 
amounts to genocide. For the fact is that 
vulnerable demographic has been the target 
of violence and lethal attacks far in excess 
of their non-Indigenous counterparts. Leading 
inevitably to the accusation that their lives 
of privation and desperation reflect the result 
of a country whose institutions fail the needs
of this group abysmally. Mind, it is rather
a complicating factor that Indigenous men
are implicated in the commission of said
violence and murder. But the responsibility
is clear; Canada has failed in its obvious duty 
to save these women from the deadly blows 
of their tribal men. Men who are themselves 
the murderous victims of their own tribe 
far in excess of the lives taken of Indigenous 
women and girls. Yes, this is a conundrum 
of the reality of massively troublesome 
dysfunction of a frail culture yet nevertheless 
the culprit is genocidal Canada, a hair shirt
its non-Indigenous must henceforth wear. 

They Served

Old they are now in the late winter 
of their lives but in the spring of their
lifetime they answered to their nation's
call when the wild beast of National
Socialist fascism ran amok through
Europe enslaving one country after
another to the ambition of an Austrian
misanthrope determined to rid the
world of sub-human scum leaving only
the Aryan nation that Germany saw
itself to be, a conquering giant of 
military might. Britain stood alone
a bastion of stubborn resistance calling
upon its colonial satraps to respond
and they did; Australia, New Zealand
India and Canada trained their brawny
youth in a march against deadly tyranny
that America saw fit once attacked by
an honourary Aryan Axis-linked nation
to raise its flag and send its contingents
to release Europe from the yoke of its
misery. They served, witnessing not 
the glory of war but the gore that war
breeds and in the process those brave
young men facing an implacable enemy
died in their scores. Survivors recall
their comrades and the battles fought
and among their memories starving
civilian populations eclipsed finally
by the sight of Musselmen, skeletal
yet among the living, those scheduled
by the impeccable Nazi Final Solution
for obliteration, whom liberation gave
opportunity to mourn their dead while
living to see a future almost denied them.
Haunted now by night visions of the war
they fought with their comrades restive
in graves, they yet linger as mementos.

Lost Souls

Forlorn, lonely and bereft of human warmth
they are legion across the varied spectrum
of populations existing everywhere on this
globe, wondering at the lost purpose of
their lives, constantly reliving grief and loss
in regret, humble and miserable in the face of
a life they view of little value to themselves
and anyone else. Burdened under the
weight of endless unhappiness they turn
their faces grimly to busy their minds and
their bodies hoping that physical exhaustion
will lead them to anaesthetize their feelings.
In the process, they smile, make a valiant
effort to react normally in their surroundings
to interact socially with family and friends
in a manner reassuring to the outside world
settling nothing within their troubled souls.
Anxious and wearied with life's blows they
convince themselves to reach out to absolute 
strangers of whom they know nothing and 
through the ether of an Internet connection 
plead for friendship to enable them to ventilate
their misery hoping that distance and empathy
may somehow miraculously present a cure.

Tell No One

The spring forest thrums and vibrates
with the boisterous energy of life
renewed, a rain-sodden landscape
of droplet-bedecked vegetation
dripping steadily upon a forest floor
resembling a swamp cradling fallen
limbs and tree trunks of years past
among the generations of leaf mass
mulching the ground enriching the
soil cradling newly emerged bracken.
Not all is graceful ferns for this is
the time of woodland violets in bloom
of trilliums and Jack-in-the-Pulpits
and Lilies-of-the-Valley vying with
trout lilies and partrideberry for room
to flaunt their conceited pride of place.
When sun filters through the tree
canopy it turns the droplets into
scintillating diamonds, the bright
flowerheads into precious gems, the
entire forest gleaming and beaming
its pride in self, nature's sublime
expression of divine artistry reborn.

Shattered

It resembles the dead of winter
when all of nature is subdued, sunk
into a dead zone of penetrating cold
howling wind, a bleak monotone of
black and white, joy evaporated as
the hunger for colour and warmth
envelopes the shuddering mass of
humanity loathe to be exposed to the
excesses of nature's enforced decline
of all growing things, her creatures
desperately seeking to shield themselves
from prolonged exposure to the lethal
elements. It is an earthquake of mixed
emotions, a tsunami of uncertainty
a volcanic eruption of doubts of one's
value and the value of mere existence
the emotions shrouded in the grey
of mourning as a cloak of isolation
sets in, lonely thoughts of bitterness
at abandonment suffuses the mind
and confuses a heart so recently
assured of love yet bereaved with
trust flagrantly set aside leaving the
mourner to survive as best they can
the covenant of forever after in 
sickness or in health a humiliating
parody of mutual dependence, of a
long-shared love, shattered in betrayal.
Agonizingly alone, the future a vacuum
of desolation, numbing mind and heart.

Observation

The world of humanity and its canted
politics is a strangely dysfunctional
pathology starkly resembling the
madness of a mirrored room engineered
to turn itself inside out and upside down
in a frenzy of chaotic cynicism. Take
as example the Islamic Republic of Iran
as it presents itself preening that its
assaults on reason mirror the reflection
that Islam imposes upon its followers
and in so doing instructs the faithful
that terrorism is but a duty called jihad
and inflicting the agony of death upon
the unready is heroic work in honour of
the god they worship. The civilized world
honours its dedication to human rights
by looking on in horror at the inflicting
of totalitarian passions on the helpless
their vulnerability as pawns ensuring no
rebellion can go unpunished, yet they
meekly acquiesce when Iran's inspired
al Quds gatherings in Berlin, London
Paris and Toronto fly the ghoulish flags
of Hezbollah and liken Israel to the
murderous Islamic State unleashing the
viper's nest of haters who nestle among
those whose indigenous heritage they
have infiltrated. The matter is dismissed
as an opportunity offered all citizens to
express the will of freedom to express
the messages of malicious intent to murder.
The bland sanctimony of evil tolerated
is loud in its acclaim for tolerance when
the victims are those despised 'others'.

Homo ... Sapiens

Don't you ever wonder why it is
that Man the Wise is so irrational?
Those among us who studiously
involve themselves in the nature
of human nature look for answers
in nature to find the nature of man.
When we speak of the laws of the
jungle we refer to wild animals and
of course humankind is nothing like
wild, possessed of an unusual brain
capable of expression and thought
and memory built upon those who
preceded us. We have made of our
unique civilization a thing of which
to be proud. It has only taken tens
of thousands of years, after all. But
look at the results! We now practise
such enlightened understanding of
ourselves. Should any wish to die
and fit the criteria they will be kindly
assisted toward that goal; state
sanctioned murder. Yet we go to
such depths of effort to save the
lives of those whose natural lifespan
is beyond near vision, who have of
their own free will addicted themselves
to chemicals that slowly reduce them
to mere vestiges of the creatures they
were. And when they overdose on 
the poison they crave, society springs
into action, to narrowly save them
from the fate they have sought which
they will determinedly pursue again.