The Thrumming Hive

How much more species-adapted
can they be than with their genetic
imprint for industriousness having
earned the prideful status of world
class steward of the planet's vital
vegetation, a role eliciting gratitude
from lesser-disciplined creatures of
the earth benefiting from the obvious
magnanimity of creatures devoted to
their task, willing to be exploited by
nature who assigned that monumental
task to a species she designed with
especial care and aforethought to act
in concert with one another assigning
specific roles and expectations to be
met. These distinguished workers
outdo themselves in integrity and
industriousness, truly an example to
all others to whom so great a task has
never been entrusted. They haven't
much of a commute between hive and
the seasonal flowers proliferating in
the forest where their communal hive 
is located within the hollow trunk of 
a venerable old pine, pleased to be 
the locus where a wild bee factory
processing pollen into honey thrums.

Consequential Reality

It is not difficult to discern why
those who oppress, threaten, torture
and slaughter are terrorists. Their
implacable ideology both condones
and encourages the murder of those
whom they recognize as opponents
to their unstoppable drive to control
and suppress, on their way to universal
conquest; an aspiration so ancient it
has been consequential in the mass
murder of a substantial proportion
of the world's population at any given
time. The modern twist to that 
historical recognition of survival
of the masses destined for genocide 
in crimes against humanity is that the 
opposition to terrorism derives from 
state military forces facing an enemy 
that respects no boundaries reflecting 
human decency using all means at 
their disposal to fend off extermination 
of their plans and so hapless civilians 
become shields falling to the assaults 
by principled governments setting out 
to free the shackled populations, in 
the process themselves racking up a 
horrendous tally of dead, earning 
condemnation, advantaging terror.

Ironies of Nature

Yet another in a series of debilitating
weather days that melt our resolve
to enjoy longed-for summer months
(as a respite for winter excesses in
low temperatures and freezing snow
storms) there is the searing wind as
of the hot breath of a rampaging giant
that assaults our fantasies of a perfect
summer inviting us to indulge in all
the remembered joyfulness of our
younger years when surely such
extremes were rare occurrences.  Yet
if we recall our younger years there
was the terrifying arrival of sound
blasting out of the sky leaving us
cowering under bedclothes, comforting
assurances from parents failing to
assuage our fear. Wait, we're adults
experienced in all the vicissitudes of
inclement weather and now dark
clouds groaning with the weight of
rain gather overhead, daytime turns
to night and we can hear the giants
of our childhood gnashing their teeth
in fury but we're anticipating the rain
to wash away the heat and humidity
and give new life to our precious
gardens. Just another of nature's little
pranks; the thunder carries on elsewhere
daylight returns, the rain forestalled.

The Compact

They were strangers but something
between them instantly connected
and they began a compact; one
offered a home the other pledged to
return to it constantly and in this way
they are reunited year after year
and their friendship delights the
gardener who tends to their needs.
This kind of altruism is not evidently
the monopoly of humanitarians
seeking to usher in a better world
but can be shared by other forms of
life for whom the greater meaning
of existence is to give pleasure to
others. And so, the California poppies
whose seed was planted once long
ago volunteers to replenish itself
every spring preparing for summer
flowering enabling the garden to preen
with its intense vibrant colours and
offer the beauty of the layered lovely
blooms to both garden and gardener.

Character Reference

From their friends at school, mixed
reviews. From their parents happy to
vouch for their wayward sons, they
are just ordinary boys; you know, boys
will be boys. Video games, that's what
brought them together, ordinary things
like that; chat rooms in dark corners
of the Internet. Oh, and an obsession
with Nazi memorabilia, admiration 
for neo-Nazi groups, the occasional
photo sent along to friends sharing a
love of shoot-'em-up videos, fully
garbed in camouflage, wielding a rifle
Nazi insignia in proud display, just
a kid's obsession, you know? Then the
road trip ostensibly heading to the Yukon
for two teens to look for work, and on
the way a distraction. Soon after the
bodies of a young couple travelling from
abroad to see remote parts of Canada.
Followed by the discovery of another
body as their trip continued. Concerns
over the whereabouts of two teens who
stopped contacting family: another two
bodies awaiting discovery? Suddenly
the absent teens are suspects in the grisly
murders and police with sniffer dogs
and helicopters track their movements
at the 'top of the world', where they may
be stumbling through a vast northern
forest as wanted fugitives. Bears there
are aplenty, boggy terrain, ferocious
insects to drive them insane. It is most
definitely not revenge motivating their
capture but a search for justice. In which
case they should be left to suffer a like
end they imposed on their victims and
may they experience the hopeless fear
and anguish those they slaughtered did.

It Is So

What's that? You've always been comfortable 
around gays? Conveyed that to your children?
Naivete is you. This is not a matter of choice
this is a social obligation in view of a 
changed culture and social contract that will 
label you in the starkest terms as biphobic
transphobic whose life values hug tight a 
certain kind of hatred and you will be shunned 
and isolated, slandered on  social media 
serving as an unwholesome example to anyone
else who might imagine they have a right 
to their personal opinion when that newly
righteous crusade to identify and crucify all 
deniers proves otherwise. There are no
halfway measures to accommodation only 
the full measure of happy days acceptance 
will exonerate you as a white, privileged 
straight-gendered occupier of other peoples' 
territory. That territory is the entitled right to
sling harsh penalties at any within society 
so ignorant they cannot see the fluidity of 
gender and the vital necessity of admiring 
and supporting those who declare themselves 
male one day female the next. Take note:
it is imperative to understand that biology is 
not predetermined, that as creatures of nature 
we may should we wish correct nature's 
ill-suited certainties if it is ordained by one's 
wishes that it be so and then of course it is so.

Realpolitik

The Byzantine world of intrigue
in hopes of undermining confidence
of a national government swaying
the population in suspicion of those
who govern them in emulation of
the palace intrigues to unseat rulers
remains alive and well, so confident
of its success in meddling to huge
advantage of regime antagonists
prepared to use any and all means
at their disposal knowing the fragility
of human allegiance to concepts and
values readily challenged in moments
of chaotic inferences permeates the
body politic everywhere but no more
so in national governments confident
of their superior attributes in justice
and social equality parading virtues 
with the certainty of tyrants. Social 
infiltration by malevolent minds 
conspiring to manipulate and defame 
by recruiting emissaries in a lock-step 
design fed by the viral ambition of 
hatred take their toll leaving the world 
teetering on the cutting edge toward
destructively destabilizing uncertainty.

Zeitgeist

How very special it is for a social upheaval's 
timely surge into the universal social contract
a kindly tolerance for all that is antithetical
to long-held values and conventional social
acceptance on such a wide range of issues 
it has become downright head-spinning. 
Few deep thoughts involved, since it has 
become a given generosity that whatever 
the concept the belief the ideology however
antagonistic to heritage and culture and 
generalized society, has its rightful place 
and must be not merely tolerated but honoured
requiring all who had formerly shunned those 
expressing opinions and actions felt to be 
degrading to the human spirit themselves be 
shunned and named as bigoted because those 
who have embraced the mantle of tolerance 
find it utterly intolerable that many others 
remain opposed to the political legitimization
of social, religious and ideological chaos 
reconstructing values and esteeming that 
held once to be reprehensible and harmful 
to the general consensus of tradition and social 
harmony. Now it is the once-disadvantaged 
who wag the tail of the newly-obedient dog
a hound that finds it feasible to overlook threats
to public order and security. claiming them
to be misunderstood, a malicious public
declaration of racism to condemn violence 
emanating from sacred piety of holy scriptures 
calling for the skeptics to reform, submit to the 
normalization equivalency of values inimical
to civilized conduct for fear of accusations
of thought-isolation as punishment, setting
aside the simpler fear of rampant terror.

 

Reunion

It's not quite that they're estranged
more simply though the genetic
roots are there, the bloodlines intact
they now are strangers to one another
one the beloved companion of humans
trusted and valued the other remaining
true to its inheritance of wild within
nature. In the urban setting the dog
is comfortable as a house pet though
comforted when introduced to the
forest when loping around the trails
the contact is made, an instant when
out of sight of its human the stealth
arrival of two coyotes immediately
arrests the white German Shepherd's
attention and he crouches in that stance
that imparts the invitation to play. A
language not uncommon to canides
leading the coyotes to respond with
all three cavorting into the forest
a trio of re-united family members.

Herself

Voice beyond peeved
as she tells me how
fed up she is
with her best friend,
always bemoaning her lot,
finding little to
her liking in life,
grumbling miserably
about everything, forever
in the blackest of moods,
never appreciating what
anyone does for her,
caution tells me not to
interrupt and confess
how familiar it all sounds
as though this is
herself describing herself.

The Sum Of All Things

Think -- for you have been so gifted 
with the power of mind and thought
 -- in one gesture -- one vital moment
in a vacuum before time existed nature
clapped her hands to create a universe
where absolutely nothing had been. Tim
has shifted from then to now when a vast
cosmos teems with gases, metals and
chemicals, uncountable galaxies 
their brilliant stars and captured worlds
of manifold lifeforms in the sum of all 
being spreading the gospel of existence
within the dark desolation of space
where bursts of energy spark intense light
and from the depths of oceans and
primeval sludge amoebas venture forth
refined and differentiated in step with
time and the living drama of adaptation
the emerged result capable of imagining
thinking and exploring its near and far 
landscape then raising its aspirations to 
the stars and beyond to venture forth and 
challenge nature's exclusive domination 
with her indomitable creatures' ambitions.

 

 

Fire .. Earth .. Water

This has been a midsummer day
of searing, torrid dimensions
the wind akin to a dragon's
fiery breath, the ball of the sun
ferociously in belching
radiating light and heat
blinding the eyes and
roasting our lungs so we know
what it feels like to awkwardly
inadvertently, carelessly
enter a blast furnace its
dials turned to an explosive
level. Just as nature has her
very own formula that
transforms one element into
another suddenly the heavenly
light is turned to the off
position and early dusk descends
as in the distance the distinctive
roar of an angry giant strides
toward us and suddenly a
stillness in the atmosphere
before the lid of the afternoon
sky is turned upside down
spilling a roaring tide onto a
surprised landscape and the heat
that intolerable heat disappears.

Cynics' Arousal

If you live long enough
you'll have had the opportunity
to absolutely detest one politician
or another and more likely quite
a few of the creatures that
claim to represent your best
interests in our much-vaunted
government where the naive are
assured that big money and the 
powerful have nothing whatever
to do with the ballot box representing
of course democracy in action.
The paradox of course is that youth
neither jaded nor cranky tend not
to heed the call of the ballot
leaving it to the elderly to
vote the bastards out with the
vengeance of the overlooked grey
demographic overtaking in the
vastness of their numbers callow
youth responding to their own
imperatives unaware of such matters
as political corruption and in any
event simply not giving much 
of a bloody damn. So out with the
inept, ego-driven, power-hungry
attention-seeking, selfie-celebrating
miscreants and give another motley
crew the opportunity to mobilize
the tectonic faultlines with their
own reversible aftershocks.

Assumptions

In their sublime innocence every child
knows that a dictator is a bad person
caring nothing of the welfare of those
that strain under the misery of a tyrant's
greedy grasp, their lives an endless
litany of deprivation and violence.
That same child can respond with the
alacrity of confidence when asked
what kind of individual it would take
to be an able administrator executing the
duties and obligations of a duly elected
president of a powerful country, reciting
character traits such as integrity, wisdom
fairness and compassion knowing that
those dependent on such skills to set
the stage for self-empowerment of a
civilized and mature population to
enable full employment and social services
ensuring safety, security, education and
health to achieve the dignity of equality
of opportunities to be contingent on that
ballot selection. Yet as the child attains
mature years it will be understood that
theory and reality have a mere passing
acquaintance. Wealth and power and the
stealth of deceit in a common denominator
calling upon the public's deepest emotions
distilled through suspicion and distrust
elevate the uncouth and unlettered whose
exploits in maladministration leave a
population in chaos and divided, the
hallmark signature of human fallibility
in elevating to governance an inept
poseur whose tainted ego assumes the
fractious dysfunction that has arisen 
be interpreted as exuberant success.

Refuge

There it is, that overwhelming 
realization of serenity your mind
grasps at grateful for a reprieve
from the constant tumult life
imposes, a temporary state of
peace that descends and suddenly
nothing is that desperately acute
and the inner turmoil pacified as
you stride along a forest pathway
taking note of tree roots and fallen
foliage, feeling the very landscape
alive and thrumming with unseen
life as bees and butterflies flit
from wildflower to shrub, the call
of a hawk pierces the air, the 
syncopated beat of a woodpecker
shredding bark, a red squirrel
scolds as you pass under its branch
and on either side of the trail you
note the pine and poplar giants
of the forest among hawthorn and
bass, hemlock and maples, mere
striplings that shafts of sunlight
illuminate falling to the forest floor 
to  highlight fungi in improbable 
shades of orange, the forest in a 
generous mood sharing its variant 
landscape even as your buoyed spirit 
integrates with your surroundings. 

Common Cause

Arise you gardeners of the world!
Across time zones and weather
zones, national boundaries and
continents people in a common cause
gather their outrage against nature's
conspiring entrepreneurs be they
bacteria, insects, moulds or any other
infestations whose purpose in existence
is to drive passionate gardeners to 
the brink of madness. These are
pests designed to dine out on the
very plants and flowers that brighten
the lives of garden-besotted people
young and old, wealthy and not who
sacrifice time and energy and hopes
on achieving a state of balance 
between artifice and authenticity
in success to rival nature herself.
Enraged at their destructive path
through our precious gardens merely
because they have been tutored by
genetic inheritance to survive, we
whack them and trap them, poison
them in an effort to liquidate their 
omnivorous pestilence, and in the 
process insult nature's fine balance.


 

Return To Zion

As social experiments go this one is quite
remarkable for its follow-through period
throughout history and the selection of a
limited demographic of an ethno-religious
tribe faithful to a group culture and its
unerring belief in one god. Really, there
is nothing new under the sun as we can
see from the liberating new cosmopolitan
political message of 'post-nationalism'.
Consider that experiment that banished a
people from its heritage and beloved land
where that people became world wanderers
showing up everywhere on every continent
in a scattered diaspora and adaptation to
life in a land other than their own. They
are an exotic breed, those of us who went
forward and multiplied only to be victims
of one wave of oppressive subjugation
after another; pogroms and genocidal bursts
of lethal punishment all failed to cure that
people of their longing for their homeland
and the ancient city on a hill, its Temple
closer to God. On their eventual return
to Zion the experiment continues, the dear
nearness achieved yet they may no longer pray
on that hill, the Temple twice destroyed. Of
the return there is the unsettling challenge
of denial of their historical roots in the land.

Her Choice

The willing servant of the Angel of
Death separated mothers from fathers
compassionately leaving infants and 
young children with their despairing 
mothers to be delivered post-haste to 
the chambers that would wrench the 
last gasp of breath from its victims then 
deliver them to the roaring ovens to 
incinerate the remains their charred 
particulate matter soaring to the heavens
falling to the ground to fertilize the 
nearby crops of farming communities 
who paid little heed to matters not of 
their own doing. Only twins were 
delivered to the tender care and  
enquiring scientific mind of Dr. Mengele 
free to experiment on the children 
of that sub-human group reviled and 
scheduled for mass extermination.
Most perished, some survived and
among them one who would never
forget the pain and the torment and
loss of all she knew and loved. In her
freedom she strove to ensure that none
others would forget but she also 
surprised herself and shocked her
cohorts by forgiving. That act alone
setting her apart in recognizing those
who had abandoned their humanity in
dedication to the ultimate evil as, in
her view, pitiable. For herself alone
she forgave, for her forgiveness could
not extend to the brief anguish of her
mother before death overtook her.

Immortal Tales

A synopsis of a veritable tome of
enchantment known by the literate
as the One Thousand And One
Nights? Simple: Beware the wiles of
womankind. One tale per night the
bewitching medium through which
Scheherazade kept boredom and death
at bay, her detailed recall of all she had
heard and read embellished, romanticized
compelling the Persian Shah to listen
and to find value in the melodious
fluidity of a born storyteller who
spoke of Djinns and malicious spirits
women were known to conspire with
to wreak their chaotic impact on
hapless men mesmerized by their beauty
and the ecstasy brought by their
exquisite bodies in intimate embrace.
Men, helpless to shield themselves
from the allure of female enticement
from the evil they plot with the aid
of their powerful allies. Nor do the
stories fail to detail the sinister impact
of Jewish corruption and wretched
inheritance of financial excesses as
much abhorred as their defiance of the
sacred Koran in spurning Islam. And
thus did the woman lure the regal
spirit of the man to spare her life.

History's Eras

Moses gave his people the Ten
Commandments and recommended
they be followed for after all God
commanded it be so. Not content
with those admonitions, Christ, yet
another opinionated Jew, urged his
followers to be good and just and
have faith in the Almighty. No one
group of people have ever been put
to the test of faith as have the Jews
from time immemorial to the present
and still counting.... The world gave
great acclaim to Moses, to the Ten
Commandments and to Christ
accessorizing their lives with great
meaning while simultaneously
spurning the heritage out of which
they spun their recommendations
yet failed to do to Jews what they
would have others do unto them. 
Christ became the possession of the 
masses who adored the messenger
and disparaged his antecedents. Now
Christ himself has been transformed
post-history from a Jew to an Arab.
Will posterity chronicle a Jewish
response crucifying the claimants?

 

Forest Giants

Some among them, long fallen
yet do their part engaged in nature's
eternal plans of regeneration
their grizzled bark rotting in
contact with the moistly fecund
forest floor to become plant nurses
enriched by soil deposits and
decayed matter to nurture the
germination of seeds blown here
and there of discrete vegetation
and tree seedlings alike. They once
were the elderly giants of the forest
curious of all that partnered their
colossal shapes and height, shaggy
bark home to mosses hanging like
beards as testament to their venerable
age in the forest hierarchy. Ferns
nestle possessively around their
broad trunks, roots digging deep
for sustenance under the forest floor
until decline inevitably leads to 
the death of a giant, toppled by
age and disease, prepared over
time to invest its decay in 
succession, its waning resources
enabling formation of new life.

Succession

Overdue, she laughed at our surprise
she was still tearing through the
forest trails with her husky, the
burden she carried not slowing her
one iota, this robust young woman
with her blond ponytail and bright
smile, swinging past us as we made
our way down a steep incline. Out
of sight out of mind as the saying
goes, so we were ripe for the surprise
of seeing her this steaming hot
morning huffing up the trail behind us
husky in tow, pushing one of those
enormous wheeled strollers meant
to challenge awkward terrain, its
contents shielded from the sun's glare
in the overheated atmosphere. Her
baby of six weeks contentedly asleep
unaware that she has a future before
her demanding she be at the very
least as tough and resilient as her
mother through exposure to nature's
elements from birth to inheritance.

History's Football

Adam's rib, no focal substance of her
own manifestly subservient in the role
given her as an afterthought, a helpmeet
a means by which humankind expands
who should know her place as more than
adequately fleshed out by those superior
in thought and muscular strength seriously
tasked with ensuring she be monitored
and gratefully accede to her allotted roles.
Those roles come complete with guidelines
the hierarchy of cultural dominance and 
the prominence of expected submission
not to arouse the indignant rage of the
guardians of public morality. And so in
China the focus was on aristocratic
admiration for dainty feet tormented
from childhood into the agony of 
exquisitely small footwear. Social
evolution mandated high and slender
heels leading to other kinds of foot
deformities in the interests of alluring
femininity. Yet lest women revert to their
animalistic nature of rhythmic desire to
augment their fecundity genital mutilation
and the pain of coupling and childbirth
remind them of their obligatory duties and 
sacrifices willingly undertaken for the 
greater satisfaction of the ultimate gender.

Above the Tree Line

The buffeting wind and inclement cold
challenges the mountain's forest of
canted, gnarled trees, dwarfs of their
cousins for whom no untoward
interference in life's cycle occurs.
There on the granite outcrops
nearing the summit where alpine
growth tenaciously makes its home
stunted pine and oak enjoy their
spectacular views of the lake and the
full-flush forest nestled at the mountain's
base. Above the boulder-strewn mantle
of the mountain boasts grey lichen
and green mosses. And between
rocky interstices in the granite's
elephant-grey carapace sumac send
up their hairy stalks and bay laurel
nestling among the scattered rocks
share billing with mountain sorrel
and bright-lanterned native orchids.

 

The Erratics

The stream of ice-clear water slips
and dances and ripples over the
mountain stream bed, rushing over
and around the rough-hewn boulder 
erratics that tumbled from the granite
mountain sides in a primeval re-set
of the mountain geology. Mist rises
to suffuse the steamy atmosphere 
on a sun-drenched summer day.
Lacy lichens cling to ancient hemlock
and yellow birch. A luxury of mosses
like miniature forests colonize the
trail, fallen tree trunkss and rocks. 
Mountain sorrel, partridgeberry and 
ground dogwood stipple the edge of the
forest. Delicate pale gold straw lilies 
and lilies-of-the-valley bloom in
synchrony. Now and again the
gracious stalk of a pale pink orchid
punctuates the forest understory of 
dogwood shrubs and Moose maple.