Heark! A World Ruled by COVID

 

Hush! Can you hear it?! The ominous deathly

silence permeating the atmosphere. Look!

Can you see it? the dense darkness surrounding

dark houses, not a light to be seen anywhere.

If there are residents they conceal themselves

behind dark curtains, unwilling to see or be

seen. Ghosts, goblins and ghouls no longer

perambulate the streets, the fearsome taunts

of 'Trick-or-Treat' are unheard this day. The

moon, full and bright shines down on -- nothing.

For nothing moves, there is no welcome this

Halloween for children, crushed with despair

that chosen costumes meant to make onlookers

shudder and shake with fear, delighting the

wearers that represent danger to the unwary

the very adults who discipline the naughty.

This is their final statement on Halloween:

never again darken my door, threatening and

roistering, the pleasure is mine this evening

as dark a mood as can be imagined, the tables

turned, witches shrieking off into the wild

black sky, familiars perched purring on their

levitated brooms while the children anxious to

be horrified and fearful their opportunity is now

forever lost, mourn a world ruled by COVID.

The Ravening Mob

Police in Islamabad resort to tear gas shells trying to prevented a mob from reaching the French Embassy

Oh dear, blush with shame, dear Madam

for erroneously attributing a howling mob's

screeching lunacy to their flaming anger over

 mocking depictions of the sacred visage of

their prophet, when in fact the primitive rage

emitting from their open-gaped maws 

stretched wide in vehement demands to

obliterate offenders were in fact directed

against their own corrupted government.

Well-balanced, reasonable people of high 

intelligence and fervid religious conviction 

temporarily off-kilter on a permanent basis; 

logic somewhat in abeyance. Islam they claim

equals peace to be achieved post-conquest.

Abject apologies are in order so that in future

such damning errors will not emerge under

your imprimatur even though your entirely

valid description of the mentality of the mob

and its primal screams of hatred and vengeance

reflect an immense gathering of humanity

which somehow managed to avert another sin

their religious devotion complements; the

timely passage into human evolution from 

its origins to its current capacity of cerebral

endowment fit for civilizational advancement.

Howling Blood-Lust

Faith, belief, goodness, peace, kindness

all encompassed in the proud declaration

that when a single life is lost it is as though

all of humanity has suffered a grievous loss. 

For we speak here of a religion of peace and

trust in one's fellow. Slight qualification; that

fellow must be of the same faith, pure and

devoted for whom the path to Paradise opens

to those surrendering themselves to the passion

of Islam. A six-year-old child will spend his

growing years examining the fate that deprived

him of his father, a sole sacrifice to depraved

vengeance for slighting the divine status of

Islam's Prophet. He will hear the words of

wisdom uttered by an Islamist Revolutionary

Ayatollah decrying the values of the nation

his father exemplified that fails to punish those

who freely speak of the absurdity of religious

devotion to the exclusion of all else while

in contrast finding it a hideous miscarriage to

give credence to those who question the verity

of evidence attesting to the deliberate expunging

of six million expendable souls from existence.

Utopia Through Fire and Brimstone

Belatedly, you may have come to the final

realization that given your lengthy years

of experience you have become an astute

judge of character for you recognize in this

soulful man character writ large in the sense

of his humanity, his vulnerability imagining

goodness in everyone, faithful to his religious

devotion, believing its absolute infallibility

as a funnel through which humankind is to

be poured sieving out and discarding human fault

to emerge pure and fully invested in love for

others and when the world is wholly comprised

of those whose transformation has been complete

no more will strife arise, mutual devotion to

the well-being of all will reign supreme, under

the protective canopy of the sublime religion

in whose values he has been steeped since

childhood. A religion perforce that threatens all

those resistant to its orbit of supreme influence

and which tasks its faithful to the martyrdom 

inherent in sending the defiant to the realm

overseen by the Angel of Death to fully achieve

jihad's conquest. Blithe assurance and kindness

proffered to those he reaches out to suddenly

shattered when confronted by hostility to his

beloved trust in the absolute. Within yourself

you weep for his forlorn desolation, attempting

to console while refraining from condoning his

assumptions in hope he will survive to mature.

The Devastated Forest

 

Suddenly, albeit not without due warning

the canopy of the forest has been defrocked

an always-startling event the elements of

fall indulge in, their opportunity to run amok

transforming the dense leaf mass proudly held

aloft, now dismally absent from view. Unless

one shifts gaze to the forest floor and there lie

the countless corpses of foliage detached from

the firm hold of the leaf stems denied the sap

of life and grief overcomes the trees at their

verdant loss, the vestments of summer. It

begins with the coming-out event masquerading

as a celebration of life, a symphony of hues

of the rainbow, stunning in intensity, proud in

bearing but transitory when the crimsons and

golds, burnt umber and reds flutter like butterflies

through the air, whirling and pirouetting as

wind looses showers of colour until the coming

out promise of the near future is fulfilled

leaving tree trunks bereft, clothed in black

silhouette relieved only by the empathetic

bright greens of the multifarious forest conifers.

Just For Laughs

 

Like a clumsily choreographed comedy skit 

meant to challenge the gullibility of the naive

and the quick-to-laugh at the most improbably

amusing halfwitted jokes, the very essence of 

bald absurdity raises its shaggy head when 

quasi-democratic leaders of violence-steeped 

nations under the banner of Islam demand 

apologies from critics of Islamofascism that 

strikes time and again to commit atrocities in 

non-Muslim countries when the outraged Muslim

leaders whose very own sharia laws commit 

to the death penalty for the unpardonably cardinal 

sin of questioning the sacred precepts of Islam 

and its founder-Prophet argue that criticism of 

violent jihad rates vehement condemnation 

since it besmirches Islam in its entirety as though 

Medieval-era monstrocities of bloody massacres

beheadings, crucifixions, explosive-vests inspired 

by extreme renditions of Islamist values of conquest 

by any means must be respectfully viewed an

admirably commendable issue of pure faith. 

Tireless Tyrant of All That Is

She's been around since ... forever

so it's not surprising that at times she

becomes a trifle crochety attitudinally

gnarly-tempered as it were, and perhaps

forgetful, rushing into things before

considering the consequences and of

course precipitating 'accidents'. Just the

way an agenarian would but much much

more. It's the little things and needless

to say, episodes of errant missions with

truly frightening outcomes. Not for her

but for her creatures. True, she has a

bottomless curiosity, indulging in any

number of experiments to tax our capacity

to endure and survive. Owing our very

existence to her formulaic dabbling in

chemicals and organic matter we view

her genius with unending respect while at

the same time languish in anticipatory fear

of her insatiable will to test our resilience

and will to surmount obstacles she poses

now and again on our path to survival.

The Nurturing Sun

 

Whether it be Ra, giver-of-life or Apollo

riding Helios's chariot across the sky the

molten gold disk of the sun throws

its rays of incandescent light and heat

onto the landscape of the world we know

casually accepting the mantle of father

of all that lives adopting all that exists

on Earth as the offspring that Nature

birthed and Sun nurtures. At no time

other than autumn when all that grows

prepare to withdraw at winter's approach

does the sun send its glitter below to

ornament trees as though in celebration

of summer past, in golden hues mirroring

its own to fall to ground even as gold

fungi rises from the soil in a symphonic

concert of seasonal joy foretelling death.

Homage, Dr.Ahmed Sati

 

His distinguished features? Well, he was

short and wiry, olive skin, dark hair. Oh,

his distinguishing features! Well, a broad smile

and a stethoscope and a genuine concern made

manifest by his gentle demeanor and prodding

questions enabling him to accurately diagnose

whatever went wrong on occasion with a

growing young family and you miss him very

much since his retirement. His successor wears

a rictus smile and no stethoscope, rumoured to

be a very good physician, so good that your old

family doctor is one of his patients. Your young

new doctor asks direct pinpoint question his eyes

never wavering from the computer screen before

him. Where your original physician routinely

checked eyes, ears, throat, heartbeat, reflex, his

replacement does none of this. But he is adept at

diagnosis enabling him to refer patients onward to

emergency clinics where other doctors practise

emergency medicine that your old doctor once

incorporated into his practise, or to specialists, or

writes prescriptions for medications whose effects

are disagreeable, or tests ad infinitum at a dizzying

pace, reminding you how much you miss the

sterling professionalism and dedication of his

predecessor in a changed world of medical practise.

The Social Media Platform Troll

It is so, one of the mysteries of the human

mind, its unquenchable belief in delusion

that what is imagined must be so and so it is

that those frail bodies harnessed to even

more febrile minds believe unequivocally in

their cerebral strength of discernment, a 

consummate intelligence capable of arriving at 

conclusions and solving dilemmas of moral 

right and the judgements that are brought to 

the argument without the foundation of such

bothersome trifles as studying the issue at

length, analyzing all that is known before

forming opinions based on objective reason.

Little wonder that those familiar with these

progressive virtue-signallers give them wide

berth unwilling to 'debate' bias-tainted 

symptoms of foregone conclusions so wide

of the fundamentals of honesty, justice and

reality that the absence of an audience sends

the offender of rational comprehension off to

social media platforms in search of those whose

opinions insult his own where he then engages

in verbal assaults accompanied by videos and

suspect news that support his contentions, yet

another of society's close-minded sociopaths

on a mission to strike down misguided beliefs

in his quest to prove his credentials as a bona

fide thought-corrections officer spewing his

slanderous accusations marshalled by hate.

As The World Turns

How far has humanity come in civilizing 

ourselves? We have only to observe the 

Holy Mother Church which had indulged in 

high prelates living in magnificent opulence

a pope who experimented with a dynasty 

when he fathered a son to become yet another 

pope and bishops took wives and lovers until 

celibacy was enforced as a sacred precept

when priests charged hefty sums for remission

of parishioners' penitence in reflection of their 

mortal sins and no one spoke askance at lecherous

men of the cloth casually raping children and 

their pious mothers, when the Holy See sought 

the heretics in their midst, conversos accused

of secret underground ceremonies in their

original proscribed faiths and auto da fes

became public entertainment -- to the present

enlightened era where the Roman Catholic

Church publicly disowns its sexual molesters

eschews its ages-old characterization of 

Jews as Christ-killer finally admitting the

Saviour was a Jew, and appointing a new

pope who though frowning on abortion is

prepared to forgive transgressors and to

acknowledge same-sex marriage while

washing the feet of the poor as an act of

personal penitence as he denounces the evil

of capitalism and conflict -- speaking out on

the harm we do as humanity to one another.

 

 

Pillage, Ransack and Loot

The Peoples' Republic is not amused. It is

in fact quite displeased. To be accused of

human rights violations, of gross territorial

aggression, of cultural appropriation and

of ransacking and looting other countries'

and corporate enterprises' intellectual properties 

for their own through scurrilous, surreptitious 

means. And nor is it other than furious to be 

said of the Communist Party of China that its

politburo directs the Peoples' Liberation Army

to intrude into its neighbours' borders to

claim disputed territory for its own, much less

dispossess small nations and their people

of their history, culture, language and heritage

territory for might makes power and China

has both and those who accuse her of crimes

fail to recognize that Beijing scrupulously

obeys the law and justice prevails; its own.

The Tides of Time

It takes considerably less than a nano

instant for a nimble mind to sort through

the neat ranks of files, sifting aside the

most recent and dredging up memory of

how it felt to turn fifty, then sixty years of

age as time relentlessly churned out year

following year and the emotions felt then

seem as raw now as they do on recovery. Yet

they are as nothing to how you feel when

your oldest child marks a birthday which

places him past those signal years, his

sister approaching 60 and his younger 

brother the age you were contemplating

retirement. An enigma, a puzzle, a strange

evocation of life that clambered obstacles

celebrated the joy of discovery and pleasure

revelling in good fortune, miserable when

misfortune entered and all in a veritable

instant collapsed neatly in a memory bank.

Bewitched and Bedazzled

 

The living glowing tapestry of fall

is  a rich brocade of immense pride

that nature takes due credit for, her

annual presentation of artistry and rich

colour in the architecture of her landscape.

It is her compassionate gift to all who

will suffer the dark, dull days of winter

when cold blustery winds freeze all

vegetation whose life sap descends 

into the soil for shelter until the storm

of winter finally departs. Briefly, we are

consoled with the texture, fragrance and

hues of tints known to exist only in

the interregnum when summer is banished

to reign elsewhere, and winter is crowned

as sovereign of the landscape. For now

however, the glory of fall is ours to 

observe and revel in, recalling when we

were children the joy in fallen leaves

rustling under our feet, and as adults the

unadulterated admiration of a scene soon

to drift into memory, ethereal, alluring.

 

 

Trust As You Will

The land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

saw it through the prism of its pride and

trust to welcome those whose minds were

not free and whose souls were on lease

to a jealous, possessive spirit of conquest

demanding of its faithful complete and utter

surrender to the sole significance of their

lives; the imperative of martyrdom in the

divine process of taking another's life as

penalty for giving offense to the sacred

memory of one whose message deemed

incontrovertible must only obliquely be

referred to with the utmost reverence. Now

the City of Light is once more in mourning

as grief sweeps the nation with yet another

atrocious admonition of the steep price to pay

when the spirit of acceptance approaches the

cul de sac of entitled retribution for nothing

is free in life without prudent caution, not 

even the Republic's most prized free speech.

Lesser Lese Majeste

She appears pale, fragile, as in fact who

would not at the admirably advanced age

of 94, but royal duty doth call and in her

august professionalism she has taken 

herself out of temporary storage in this

time of a global pandemic to honour

the equally professional work of a

state scientist, appearing garbed in a

dusty pink hat and coat which colours

serve to enhance her delicately worn

presence, a Monarch for all the people

well-loved and venerated, setting an

example of courage and perseverance

in the wisdom of her being, in a nation

beset with a viral scourge beseeching

all to take necessary precautions to

distance oneself and adapt to masking to

prevent contagion. But where is the 

virus with the unmitigated gall to infect

a royal personage? Queen Elizabeth the

Second knows her unapproachable status

unhesitatingly presenting herself unmasked

daring the fates in their presumptive role.

 

 

Listen and Relate ....

 

Taken aback? Nonplussed? Well. You did ask.

Yes, a casual question, more a greeting than

anything, one that young people are prone

to answering with a chirpy 'Fantastic!' The 

fellow towering over you is the very image

of a robust and hale specimen in his 6ft+

glory, a former military man. Albeit one who

wears a pacemaker and a hearing aid. You 

did notice that his stride through the forest

trail as he approached was slow favouring

one side with a slight limp. But you asked.

It is the polite, civil greeting of people who

haven't seen one another in a while.... You

know him to be emotionally distant, possibly

anticipated nothing more than a breezy 'fine!'

but that's not what you got, as you stood there

nodding and commiserating. That he chose you  

among his acquaintances to hear his explication

of elderly debilitation likely meant he needed to 

vent, feeling your ear to be a compassionate one

not looking for sympathy ... just ... sharing.

So shed that discomfort and add a casual but

caring air of someone who knows all about

an aging body in a state of decline ... empathize.

Muse, Distracted

It was all there in my mind, the perfect

combination of words reflecting the very

observations I meant to convey, just on 

the cusp of composition when he called out

to me to drop everything, grab my camera 

and head outdoors. All-day rain had turned

when darkness fell to a mystical aura of

light fog capturing light from the street

lamps in a magical transformation of an

urban landscape. The limited sightline of

night fixed in the darkness overwhelmed by

a white veil hovering in the atmosphere

where the familiar became transposed to a

scene of evanescent and mysterious beauty

an otherworld, a floating dream of elsewhere.

Oh, and that poem resonating in my mind

anxious to be captured and to reflect thoughts

on the sentiments of the day? Dissolved.

Hate-Mongers on a Spree

 

Who among the intelligent and aware feel it is a

simple matter of social grace to be tactful in the 

presence of the witless who press their views lacking 

an iota of knowledge of what it is they profess to give 

counsel to? Clearly these forgiving minds simply sweep 

out of consciousness the blather spilling from the mouths 

of the obtuse. Are they right or are they wrong? Their 

polar opposites, faced with pronouncements of fervid 

belief in the hateful views they spew while slandering

their betters in a campaign to belittle and harm those 

whom they detest respond with like venom born of 

disgust, hurtling facts to dispute the bigoted fancy 

of little minds and in so doing rather than considering 

such incitements beneath their notice give them the 

oxygen required to attract a larger audience comprised

of like minds, when to ignore the doltish proclamations 

of conspiracy theorists and their admirers serves to 

stifle their affect. So forget about suffering the presence 

of fools obtuse to reason and reality to allow a stifling

blanket of undisguised disbelief in stupidity's rationale 

embracing the propaganda of bruising accusations 

bestowing instead a glare of incredulity at the offence 

to human dignity and reality as you quietly and with

feeling recommend they shove off, disappear from 

the face of your deserving impatience with fools. 

May I Use Your Given Name, Doctor?

 

The doctor will see you now, an assistant

announces as though conferring a favour

from the royal house of the healing arts.

Well, of course the doctor will see you

she is after all your link to good health when it

begins to fail and you have contracted with

her for her professional services. In an era

when children casually inform their long

suffering parents that they erred when at 

birth assigning gender, when LGBTQ2

rights trump most others as they redirect

language to channel their preferences and

when anyone in any service industry has the

socially-approved entitlement to address the

infirm elderly by their given names, doctors

invoke the privilege of restraining patients

from the use of theirs. Consider this: medical

school enrolls students who have a proven

record of academic and social prowess much

superior to that of their peers, where rigorous

study of anatomy and biology and illness 

fatigues the mind and the body's elusive rest

quotient to produce a medical degree, an

obvious distinction not undertaken nor lightly

rewarded. Yes, patient-physician social distance

is recommended and for good reason, and no

you may not resort to a first-name basis, patient.

 

 

Thanksgiving

A time for universal meditation

on thankfulness for the abundance of

nature's generosity when long-gone

generations paused, assessed their

season's harvest and prostrated themselves

before the mysterious hidden power

whose formula for existence all had

reason to be grateful for. No longer do

we toil as once was done to till the soil

and seed it and harvest the results that

would feed the world through the long

sterile months of winter. Yet tradition

demands that obeisance to the foundation

of wealth, health and the security of the

future enshrined in our very marrow of

enduring survival be forever ritualized.

The Sleeping Garden

 

When the Immortal Bard set quill to quire

writing the sentiment that parting is such

sweet sorrow it was meant to adorn the

Medieval romance of star-lost lovers yet 

the phrase is entirely apropos in twinning 

gardens with their gardeners and at this season 

of fall for those who lavish lovingly tender care

on all that erupts from the soil to thrive and

thrill throughout the growing season the

phrase resonates. Tomatoes, ripe and unripe

harvested, marigolds plucked from their 

post-frost misery joined by impatiens and

begonias, zinnias and asters, all to become

sadly composted destined to fertilize the

growing medium for next year's crop of

dazzling beauties. For the present and until

the snow flies when all become a distant

memory, their dated expiration is mourned as

the garden is tidied and prepared for slumber

in a reprise of a desolately emotional play.

 

Faith to Death's Doorstep

 

Infused with the ecstasy of their faith

they see no need for the exercise of caution

for the sublime eye of God is upon them

and will not tolerate harm to assault

those whose trust in the guidance of faith

and unquestioning surrender to destiny

ordained through worship rewarding them

in this life, a mere preliminary to a more

lasting state in the hereafter, needs no cure. 

So not for them precautions ordered by the 

authority of government agency and their 

minions purporting concern over the death rate

citizens succumbing to the morbid assault

of a pathogen so deadly it has swept the globe

and sweeps it again gathering impetus and

a never-ending death toll. For if God wishes

them to return to his heavenly house they are

in complete and everlastingly faithful accord.

Dreaming a Double Life

 

As scientific convention has it, the dream state

is a function of the mind while the body is at rest

 

a reflection of the state of the mind and dreaming 

 

is said to be linked with the soundness of the body's 

 

relaxation in its sleep ritual of mind-body renewal.

 

I know differently however, given my experience

 

such that I must confess I lead a strange and 

 

double life. Not the type of admission released

 

to a confessional, but one that recognizes the

 

peculiarity of a phenomenon for which there 

 

may be a rational explanation but such may

 

not reflect the verisimilitude of my double life.

 

One a reflection of the other in that it is all 

 

so ordinary as to be comforting in its explicit

 

reflection leaving me to wonder which mirrors 

 

which when the very pedestrian nature of 

 

what occurs seems like an extension of the day

 

that ended when I fell asleep. There was a

 

time when my dreams echoed longing and fear

 

a search for myself and for my home, elusive

 

and strangely disturbing. Now that my psyche 

 

has settled into its double life there is peace

 

and tranquility, the comfort of familiarity

 

flowing from the hours of daytime to those of night.

 

 

 

 

 

Sturm Und Drang

 

A command performance of sound and fury

a stirring drama of sinister proportions, a

sound poem set to the music of the heavens

the like of which had he dreamed it, Wagner

would have been proud. But these were not

ubermensch, instead a convention of giants

that degenerated into a shouting match of

impressive dimensions that roiled the fall

sky masked with an immense dark scowl that

stretched from east to west and denied the

sun its daily entrance. The disagreement

between weather systems and the atmosphere

was entirely that of nature's devising when

her judgement was focused elsewhere than

on the puny affairs of existence on one of her

lesser planets when competing forces held a

dress rehearsal for mass upheaval and a state

of pandemonium ensued, with trees forced to

courtsy and bow as wind gusted ferociously

directionless and powerful and otherwordly

groans fell from the sky as the giants collided

upsetting their great mugs of mead. Thunder

following thunder following rainbursts with

the rousted wind bellowing through the canopy

of the fall forest, bowing in obeisance to nature.

 

 

The Forest Remembers

 

It now stands proudly as an urban forest where

once it was wilderness, but even as an urban

forest it remains an oasis of natural beauty

accessible to residents of nearby communities

as a wonder of nature revealing the seasons

to those accustomed to concrete in place

of a forest floor churning with renewal. The

forest remembers days long since gone when

only the animals, many of which have abandoned

the forest as their natural habitat roamed its inner 

precincts. The forest remembers when settlers

arrived as the time when hatchets and saws

axes and the brute strength of dray horses

denuded readily reached areas. But this is a

forest incorporated within a deep ravine, yet

it too was breached. The forest remembers when

the stream bisecting it at the ravine's basin

became a lake during heavy rains where fish

leaped and area farmers sent their sons to

fish and hunt. One pine recalls its youth when

farm children hammered wood strips along 

one of its leaders so they could ascend to

its topmost branches. That tree, now a forest

giant attained great height, its massive trunk

supporting three huge leaders, the wood

strips intact but towering high out of reach

of any urban children who might now pass by.

The Faithful Our Soldiers

 

Can a scowl be smug? It can be when it rests on the 

face of a megalomaniac convinced that the privileged 

puissance of his mission will encounter no obstacles 

too great for his energies of persuasion to transcend. 

The scowl is a permanent fixture, an outer reflection of a

deep-seated aversion to authority other than his

unquestioned own capable of storming the ramparts 

of reason and justice to forge his very own conquest 

in service to a sacred vision he has inherited from 

one to whom the mountain refused to move. To him

however, the mountain will shift accommodatingly 

in response to his skilled capabilities, his bellicose 

rhetoric, his belligerent threats, the very power and 

thrust of his unassailable argument of Islam as the

great slayer of false beliefs, the purveyor of peace 

in the raucous world of conflict. For as anyone with 

a single molecule of cerebral capacity is aware that in

the immortal words of Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The 

mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, 

the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.  

Concise, clear and entirely reflective of the mission 

selflessly embarked upon by the man whose blessed

existence sparks the second coming of Mohammad.

 

The Fifth Commandment

 

As hoary old plaints of parental laments

go, this one stands out for its ancient

lineage; surely it extends back in time

to ancient Greece, before then Egypt,

perhaps even Mesopotamia when befuddled

parents contemplating their relationships

with their errant children, shook their heads

and intoned that phrase: What's happening

with kids today? To that my old high school

chum adds: We weren't like that in our time.

For anyone over -- let's see, how about

age 40? -- the bedraggled words of anguish

are familiar; correction, it's familiar to the

younger cohort too against whom it's directed.

But wait a minute, how old is that younger

cohort, teens, 20s? Digest this if  you will:

my old friend really is old in her mid-80s

and her children are correspondingly 'old'.

Her frustration rests on the fact that for

the past year one of her sons refuses to

speak with her and will not inform her of

the cause of his juvenile withdrawal of

the 5th injunction of the covenant between 

humankind and god where all are commanded

to Honour thy father and thy mother for

it is they who gave thee life, thou ingrate!

 

  

 

Routine

 

There are four of us, a tight little bubble of

two very mature adults and two little dogs

guaranteed to be seen daily in a habitual

stroll through a neighbourhood forest

day after day, month following month

year by year as inevitable as the years

that have clothed our existence. And there

is but one of him, a short, slight, dark

young man with piercing black eyes and

a slight walking list, always alone careful

to avert his eyes lest his manner appear to 

be construed as forward in a society whose

culture he may not yet be comfortable with.

The landscape is beguiling, a succession of

 autumnal-colour days in a heavily wooded 

ravine where few venture but those that do

seek comfort of nature. As he strode briskly 

by I voiced the 'Hi!' of acknowledgement no

doubt taking him by surprise, and the next

time again that 'Hi!' an unmistakable greeting

stranger to stranger eliciting from him a

'Hello' and a shy nod, our little dogs taking

no notice, my companion quiet. Soon his

return echoed my own and a chance remark

on the beauty of our environment brought a

stream of clipped words and a genuine smile

creased his thin face, his body language

releasing its tension and all it cost was 'Hi!'

 

 

Words of Consolation

 

Never buried, those deep fearful memories

of hoary vintage and new. Easy enough to

dredge to the surface of your thoughts

unbidden but vibrant with grief and

regret though the years pass and those

who left so long ago remain as they were

when they appear in dreams but not to

the waking mind which recalls them wan

and shrunken halfway to death because

no power in medicine nor longing nor

faith could apprehend the inexorable

process of cancer. You know what it is --

so deserving of the dread no other mortal

enemy is capable of calling up like a dagger

of ice plunged deep within your heart and

you palpitate with silent terror at the very

word. It is a curse, a blasphemy against the

sacredness of life, a wrench turning the lever

of existence to the off position. The agony of

despair and fear overwhelming the mind when

a parent, a sibling, a friend, a neighbour, an

acquaintance reveals the newly-acquired burden 

they have somehow inherited and you instinctively

search for consoling words and they will not

come for what can you say of this savage

disease that destroys life? Is there comfort in

formulaic words of compassion when you 

know of your own experience that sounds

voiced in the chasm of forlorn pain are not

deciphered as consolation but acknowledgement

of the inevitable, and this they already know.

His Very Self

 

There, he's done it again. Surpassed all

expectations. So then that two-word phrase 

with its connotations of positivity should make 

those who follow the exploits of this extraordinary 

man applaud his performance, but then of course 

we're using the language of superlatives and

this man is extraordinary in the sense that

makes most logical, sane minds cringe.

Those who might just shrug off the irritating 

inanities of an ignoramus find themselves 

unable to do so since this very symbol of 

narcissistic superiority in a mind that is superior 

only in its capacity for demonstrably inchoate 

thought processes and unquestioning certainty

resides in one who has been elevated to the

still-most-powerful political, economic

social position on a planet of hundreds of

disparate nations all tethered to the affairs

of the country he leads. A country furthermore

that he has helped to bring to the brink of

total dysfunction where lawless thuggery

is but a reflection of the man's engagement

as a showman and business tycoon of most

questionable ethical concerns. Yet there  he 

is smirkingly flaunting his excesses as he

positions himself to continue the rampage of

his rule on the civilizational democratic order.