The White Coat

For those with chronic illness impelled to attend 
a place of healing and comfort hospitals resemble 
institutions of religious faith where parishioners 
gather seeking direction and assurance from a higher 
order whose earthly representative is regarded 
as an emissary from god. No less is the medical 
practitioner considered a demi-god healing the ill 
thrusting the spectre of the Grim Reaper away from
contention. And so doctors have become priests 
of health, a position to which they accustom themselves 
in entitlements of venerated power over death
taking their very special place in public trust. Until
nature presumed to retrieve for herself the overlooked 
reality as arbiter of existence creator of all that is 
in whom alone divine authority rests, thrusting the 
world of man into a mad dilemma of its own 
devising where divine intermediaries, of faith and 
medicine find themselves helpless and what's more 
become themselves vulnerable targets reducing their
status to mere expendable human beings. There the 
story does not end for delving deep into their psyches 
and professions, suppressing fear and their own 
humanity they rise to the occasion embracing their 
colleagues while struggling desperately  to own 
the reputation they burnished to rescue humanity.

 

Occupying Minds

One wonders, does extreme preoccupation
possibly qualify as a medical condition
when it crowds out all other normal
functions of a questing mind? Might
such a singular focus on a particular issue
register as a slight unhinging brought 
courtesy of an all-enveloping concern by
no means monopolized by you alone but
shared universally? A newly emerged
pathological condition fit to respond to 
a new pathogen evidently fixes the mind
to dwell incessantly upon dread potentials.
Not without cause for one has only to
open eyes and ears to the mouths of those
expounding on the fearsome toll this
zoonotic takes as it rampages through
time zones ravaging entire populations. A
mutating, elusive, silent predator instilling
panic in its wake. Shedding from its victims
to infect countless others, this dire threat
occupies the mind before invading the body.

 

Silent Invader

Behold, ghostly streets of a ghastly time.
All is still, but not becalmed. As though
the dread end-of-times has arrived but
it has not entirely. Only those whose time
has come prematurely by nature's decree
primarily those who have lived long for
there are no life-time guarantees or rewards
for existence and a strange new threat has
made that evident as it thrives finding new
victims everywhere it inveigles its raw and
evil presence. A grey miasma of dread 
and fear hovers everywhere, fixing peoples'
minds on what might be the inevitable as
their spirits shrivel in dismay and life's
spark assumes an elusive edge. In stark
panic a struggle begins as populations strike
out to acquire life's necessities looting
what they feel will sustain them, depriving
others of sustenance as humankind reverts
to survival imperative and leaders haplessly
enact laws in wan hope of overcoming this
barbarically destructive weapon mankind
itself unleashed while dispassionate nature
engrosses itself unravelling the outcome.

Apocrypha

In the beginning

there was chaos, but then a gregarious atom

encouraged a clubby atmosphere

where they all gathered and there was order.

At first there were hot gasses, but then

cool season prevailed and

minerals and metals crusted the fires.

One lone amoeba suffered incurable hubris

thought she could do better

and founded a dynasty

on her vision.

In time a she-ape clambered down from the trees

pointed at the sea, and declared 'there is my creatrix!'

Named her daughter Eve

and set her the task of naming others. So Eve

chatted up giraffes and elephants

whales and cricets. She called

a brash Adamai snake-in-the-grass

for offering her figs when she

couldn't give a damnation

for his ignorance. Everything

was fine until he learned to 

wield a pen while she

continued to till the earth.

Eve provided crops for their

offspring and Adam pushed

back the night of eternity

offering superiority and his

own rendering of ineffable truth

that of himself as Supreme Creator

half of him up there

the other down here.

We May Yet Hope

We tried our best

and believed

we taught our children

sensitivity, intelligence

appreciation toward

the benefits of hard work

and a fine aesthetic sense.

The shock!

to discover

on the dart board

passed so many times

never before noticed

stapled photographs

at points of

highest benefit.

She to whom

we owe allegiance

smiling deathlessly

her face pockmarked

by unerringly

directed darts.

And there they are

the Prime Minister

and all those elected

to high posts in government

irremediably scarred

barely recognizable.

Does this behaviour

defy patriotism?

Have we raised a

viper's nest of anarchists?

c.1979

The Message is the Medium

My friend tells me

it's been nice 

knowing me all these years.

With a pat on the arm

he says I've

been a good sport

and even

pleasant company.

That's how I know

he's just recalled

         the date

and like last year

and the one before

has forgotten

to get me an 

anniversary gift.

The surface child

acquisitive me

never fails to be 

disappointed; yet

      somehow their

belatedness and haste

doesn't make the words

tripping hopefully

from his familiar mouth

sound any less sincere.

He sincerely hopes

I won't strike a

        tragic pose of

           benign neglect

weep tears of self-pity

like last year.

Strange how some things

never change.         Odd

how we never 

seem to learn.        Nice

that life goes on

any old how.

c.1979

 

Adaptation

In a new riff on Darwin's survival of

the fittest, civil society has turned inward

on itself. We have become misfits in the

sense of social aversion overtaking our

gregarious natures for to submit to life

as usual renders usual life very short for

all too many. Where once parents concerned

themselves with children whose nature was

to be withdrawn and distant from others

this has now become a virtue, one that all

others are enjoined to heed lest a dread

and malevolent life form that has no life

of its own but lurks unseen, an opportunist

awaiting a host enabling it to replicate and

to infect greater numbers of the unsuspecting

invades. Now, the elderly already living a 

hermetic life sealed away from greater society 

must refrain from contact and study the great

Viktor Frankl's memoir for the meaning 

of life as they embark in early morning

hours like unscrupled thieves to access

food to sustain their tentative lives in the

brief hours that grocers set aside to aid their

quest to grow yet older in social hermitage.

It's Not Necessarily So

But rather of necessity. We are equipped

with certain emotions for a reason not

merely because they make us human

but because they protect our humanness.

So that famous old adage so smugly

trotted out at times of viral public concern

that There Is Nothing To Fear But Fear

Itself is just that; smug and trite when

indeed there are times when the very fact

is fear prepares us for the need to guard

ourselves from what may conceivably be

certain doom. Nature gifted us with a

sense of caution that fear electrifies

warning us of impending danger. As we

evolved so did the world we live in; as

threats from predators in the wild alarmed

and taught us vigilance and discretion in

our movements to the present when civil

life in our modern era is brought to a

screeching halt with the sudden presence

of a silent deadly biological threat unseen

but lurking as a sinister infection whose

purpose is invasion and replication, in the 

process far outdistancing any threat from 

marauding wildlife yet in fact an infectious 

agent of wildlife that humans hunt to consume.

The dread that now consumes us is fear.

On Notice

There's a reason why antagonists are
portrayed to reflect the regard in which they
are  held in popular opinion. As a northern
people we absorb the lessons of intimacy
with nature welcoming the inevitable. In
that respect the seasons' arrival at nature's
designated times are accepted and celebrated.
Each of the seasons has their purpose and
becomes a welcomed presence. Only Old Man
Winter seems predisposed to overstay his
welcome. On arrival we rejoice and indulge
in a multitude of leisure pursuits geared to
advantaging the presence of cold, wind and
snow, exulting in the beauty surrounding us
and the invitation to make use of the lofty
white coverlet that puts the land to rest. The
indulgences of  winter comfort wear thin
however as time moves forward leaving us
less bewitched by cold, ice and raging winds
when the arrival of spring lifts our spirits
and we yearn for the sight of verdant fields
and forests to replace the presence of snow
grimed by age and atmosphere. Winter placed
on notice of evacuation can be a hard sell
and nothing seems to please the departing
season quite so much as lingering cold and 
snowfalls topping up the vanishing snowpack.
While winter grudgingly packs up his baggage
of ice, snarling wind and freezing temperature
he leaves a parting message: I'll be back.

The Arrival!

The interval between winter and spring
is one where the former is adamant his
position will remain unmoved, unprepared
to awaken the sleeping fields and forests
the latter assembling all the patience at her
command reminding the recalcitrant Old Man
that ancient arbitration had decreed to all
seasons there is a reason and the slumbering
Earth must be awakened from its cold and
deep sleep to diligently host new life for
much depends on the fecundity of fields
and furrows upon which nature's creatures
depend. The world over, ancient cultures have
welcomed the arrival of the Vernal Equinox
crediting nature for the clockwork reliance
of her seasons, none as assiduously expected
as spring, for with it comes the promise of
life renewed and the expectation of green
vegetation reborn from the depths of winter
isolation, prepared to feed a hungry world.

 Nature, Unleashed 

Nature would never divulge whether she
scanned the Old Testament feeling a degree
of umbrage that her brilliant creations have
been attributed to a male spirit conceived by
the spirit of males and in one fell swoop of
seven days the universe was created. There
has as yet been no official word from nature
whether her growing disaffection with
mis-attributed genius has rattled her sense
of self sufficiently to unleash upon the
impudent a lesson that her complex skills
and heterogeneous formulae carry a lesson
to those most unruly and disobedient of her
creatures, but her latest innovation has most
certainly placed the world as humans know
it on notice that all that has been can be swiftly
and jarringly displaced at any moment of her
discretionary decision-making. As she
unleashed upon the unprepared a silent
predator quick to invade and multiply
unseen and unsuspected, uprooting security
and threatening mass decline in a stunning
cascade of unstoppable carnage on her Earth.

Castaway

Who ever might have imagined

that the ancient oblate spheroid that

resulted when a vacuum containing

nothing created a cosmic explosion

casting gases and dust in a great arc to 

cool and become our home, a rock of

refuge for nature's creations where we

would thrive and mature, populating

continents, sailing its seas, discovering

and conquering, would find us now in

such peril? Who might have imagined

there to be so many islands on Planet

Earth, each of them now claimed by

every human now alive and hoping to

remain that way clings to, isolating

ourselves from one another to elude

the stalking of the silent, deadly virus

that has invaded threatening our existence

with each tide of increase it succeeds in

achieving inhabiting another host who

in turn transmits its pathogenic guest

onward in its predatory quest to multiply

and destroy, a conquest it gains unless

prospective hosts sequester themselves 

to starve its intent and stave off death.

 

Early Harvest

The sun edges past clouds

gleaming like a silver dollar

and we dip our paddles

the lake reflecting

darkness of oncoming rain.

There looses a kingfisher's

mad taunt from pinetops

circling the lake.

Water pearls in our wake

the wind gusts and

our canoe darts sleek as an otter

to a rock-littered inlet

where we beach.

As we thrust sharp sticks

the dark soil yields garlic

blossoming the air

with its heavy headiness.

Strawberries hide

their insufficiency under weeds.

We carefully pick what's there

for late afternoon jam.

Gulls scream overhead

and whitecaps scatter on

the lake. The clean feather-edge

of swallows slice the turgid air.

c,1980

Influencing Mores

Social distancing was once the sole
baileywick of the cultural and social
elite who wouldn't dream of mixing
it up with social and cultural inferiors.
Neighbours who got to know one another
all too well might on occasion begin to
practise social distancing. Mothers were
notorious for instructing their little
Jimmys and Nancys not to play with
those nasty children of Jewish, Black
or immigrant parentage lest they be
contaminated by whatever character
flaws their race was known and despised
for. Eventually a classless system of
equality prevailed and it was the poor
and the ignorant who became the social
outcasts whose presence one distanced
oneself from while celebrity culture
embraced all, oblivious of heritage. Now
the yellow peril that racist seers warned
of while the world watched as its culture
of sacrifice and work ethic rocketed
it into superpower status inadvertently
unleashed a deadly menace it refuses
to own returning the world community
to its waning isolationist defence against
the demon of morbid contamination.

Bumper Crop

The highway stretches

a hot grey ribbon

frenzied traffic evaporating

over the horizon

while on either side

wide green spaces, trees

introduce the country

to the city beyond.

Nervously facing traffic

the juvenile groundhog waits

mustering momentum for crossing

if it manages one double lane

a boulevard will render rest

encouragement for the other half.

Does it know

that wild thing why it must

make that crossing?

Does it notice

far beyond on the other side

the activity there?

Crows,  undertakers

      carrion-eaters

zealously perform their function.

 c.1981

Expiration Date

We are all born equal and not in the
sense of assessing all the preferred and
admired attributes that mark the presence
of one gifted with the ability to excel in
all enterprises they may enter, but in the
very essence of being alive, in that the
gift no one really wants is that of an
expiration date. A date that no one
regardless of how gifted they may be
can ever begin to imagine, whether simply
through the auspices of advanced age or
accident, ill health, and even inheritance
all circumstances beyond control and a 
matter of personal fate. Ill health becomes
no one, advanced age imperils everyone
and accident can also be construed as a
natural phenomenon such as for example
a dread disease that suddenly erupts and
handily sweeps the globe, unstoppable and
lethal for those whose expiration date has
most immediately moved closer to the final
date allotted by impermeable circumstance.

After Freud

There's great therapeutic value

in unloading

disappointments

unhappiness of others

not rising to expectations

which is why psychiatrists

have it made; they've learned

the wonderful attribute

of listening, gently probing

as though another's discontent

matters, personally.

              Themselves

close-mouthed as a matter of

professional self-preservation

who's ever to discover that they

aren't after all wizards

of the arcane cult of living?

Who'll ever know about their

predeliction for coke

(I mean the real thing)

obsession with dainty extremities

infantile fear of the dark

proclivity to premature ejaculation

            UND ZO ON? 

C.1995

The Subconscious File

Deeply embedded as cherished
treasures those synaptic snapshots
your brain thoughtfully stored in
memory will be recalled increasingly
as age proceeds as it must and time
closes its promise for the future.
What has been is forever gone and
cannot be repeated, yet those briefest
of deeply embedded treasures imbued
with emotion minutely envisioned
with the  haunting intimacy of just
having occurred are truly distant in
time, momentarily recovered then
instantly returned to that file folder
that memory compassionately brings
to the fore as a reminder that our
lives are complex and unrecoverable
we exist and we roam the pathways
of opportunity and circumstance and
when we are bound tightly with vibrant
ribbons of bright-coloured emotions
entwined with love burrowed deep
within our souls its echo vibrates.

Nature's Response

Everything has turned upside-down
and inside-out, twisted and starkly
resembling a nightmare your sleeping
mind had never before ventured to
visit, but here you are, awake and fully 
aware, but the magnitude of the chasm 
of fear yawning before you while bearing
a nightmare of  unanticipated dimensions 
is real and the world is reeling in disbelief
that nature has reacted to the dietary
customs of a vast population whose arcane 
beliefs defying science are denying the 
proprietary interests of nature itself
unwilling to rest complacent while her 
creatures are destroyed, deciding in her 
imperious royal manner to destroy those 
whose conceits have gone too far in 
threatening her dearly held creations for 
as she has brought to life all that exists 
she has the power to reverse the process 
saving some and punishing those whose 
unbridled hubris she chooses to reprimand.

Voyage to Strange Latitudes

In the strange latitudes

of that hemisphere

animals wear shifting eyes

wind blows a hollow song

through aeolian strings

set on a razor's edge.

             There

the newborn adorn

dark furniture like a

ship captain's parlour

displaying mementos

of exotic voyages;

mewling objects d'art

             and

love is played at feelingly

coevals plucking sole eyes

doing the rounds

in comradely fashion

so all can see through

fortune's mists. 

             There

mountains blossom

bright thorn flowers

earth opens welcome

chasms for escape from

terrifying sameness.

In that country

trespasses are welcome

in boiling cauldrons

spitting primal brew

             and

heat brings saline dew

to unsuspecting brows.

c.1986

Yesterday's Child

Fiddleheads in the garden

slowly unfurling

Lilies-of-the-Valley

not yet belling

the Manchu Cherry

sprinkling white confetti

on the vibrant green

of urgent grass

and swallows executing

their preying arabesque

while beyond the

sun, a pyromaniac's frantic dream

slips behind the houses.

Sitting idly on the swing

spring air filters

through the maple's

tender thrusts

as bees target straight for home

and the mesmerizing hum

of the neighbour's mower

returns growth to order.

The children

never recall other years

only living in the warmth

of the breeze

pulling stray hairs

beyond the spiralling

loops of the bicycle.

Memory of another child

yaps close behind the

flushed faces of

this spring day's children.

c.1979