The Winter Forest

 

The winter forest is an enchanted
glistening landscape of
chilled silence, muffled and
deeply peaceful. Contoured in
its serene season of rest.

A gust creates an ectoplasmic
drift slowly unburdening
a laden spruce bough.
A lone crow leisurely crests
over steep forest spires.

Tiny chickadees flit
among the trees,
a companion nuthatch
minding their order.

The sky's blue canopy
ribboned by evanescently
diffused clouds as lightly
transparent as the snow
below is opaque, fully
blanketing the frozen earth.

Today's languid wind chill
far less urgent, small wildlife
come suddenly awake to a
day of sun and glorious prospects.

Mice and voles burrow deep
under the warm weight of
their enveloping comforter.
Late-season wildflowers
nod their winter-dried heads.

The forest stream lies hushed
and frozen, glinting back
the sun's crystalline shine,
banked with snow drifts.

 

 

Unquiet on the Eastern Front

Unquiet on the Eastern Front, the antagonists 

barricaded opposite the once-sedate village 

bordering on the city the aggressor-invader 

plans to seize. Servicemen on both sides dug into 

their trenches, the regular ill-trained military 

and the hastily trained civilians who  defend their 

nation's sovereign territory. They who have seen 

acclaimed film documentaries of the travesty of war 

brutalizing the fearful psyches of young men 

tasked to battle, to view their opponents as the

enemy. In truth the enemy of greater numbers 

in both men and artillery spurred to action 

the defenders stirred to defence of home 

hearth and family now know intimately 

the hollow shell of emotions as endless rockets 

explode their lines while they wait to die as did 

their companions in battle while others are

felled in deep psychosis, minds wounded

for a lifetime of anguish mourning the end of

family. Dead, all, in strikes aimed unerringly

toward civilian enclaves for their tormentor

sneers at the niceties of civilizational mores

intruding in the province of barbaric invasion.

Primal Imprint

The primitive brain evolved in humanity from its 

basic reptilian foundation of reactive survival while

developing over aeons a more flexible structure in 

additions that introduced emotion and finally 

reasoning capacity. In theory all of humanity 

carries in the cavity of its skull a three-part brain 

interdependent and totally human. There are times 

when it seems as though some cultures, societies 

and ethnic groups depend primarily on the original 

reptilian brain, the following two parts stillborn 

ossified and inoperative. Like other animals of the 

reptilian family these proto-humans are cold-blooded 

despite an anatomy resembling that of all humanity. 

What reveals the preservation of a primordial brain 

to the exclusion of the following two is the grim 

magnetism of promoting death for all who interfere 

with their archaic goals in claims of entitlement to 

ancestral lands that time hands down to the people 

identified in the earliest of manuscripts sacred to the 

originators of a religion also claimed as theirs 

transfiguring the originators to the status of interlopers 

whose destiny is to die untimely deaths convenient 

to the claimants leaving no opportunity unused to kill.

Courage in Living Display

These are the emotional sentiments

of a leader whose nation has been

brought to a state of conflict by a

neighbour whose violent grasp

reaches out to encompass land sacred

to the memory of those inheriting it from

their forbears, now reduced to countering

the land-greed of a monster willing

to sacrifice countless lives while in

the process destroying all that he

covets, blind to the horrors witnessed

by the leader whose effusive praise

for those whose support has enabled

his nation to hold the intruders at bay

tearful at the sights of destruction of

his beloved homeland, agonizing at

the plight of his butchered people yet

ringing with hope for the future as he

applauds the resolute courage of his

soldiers in facing the enemy, waxing

poetic in his promise that he and

his people will endure, will succeed in

routing their tormentor, so their nation

will rise in triumph against adversity.

 

 

Giving Offence

There is no end of social cowpies

one must be aware of to avoid

overstepping the boundaries of

sensitivities. A paternalistic attitude 

is offensive but one of avuncular 

concern as example is tolerable. 

Attuned to blistered attitudes of 

entitled respect one treads gently 

in exchanges with relatives, friends 

and neighbours lest one offend. 

Extreme cold has arrived and with it 

empathy for the plight of wild animals 

for whom appropriate food is put out

daily. Inadvertently we have given

offence to squirrels for the bread

squares today lacked peanut butter

or butter and still lie where they

were scattered, rejected. We now

imagine the squirrels' ire expressed

in mumblings of racism. The four

little baby carrots put out daily for

the rabbit was augmented to five

this day yet only four were taken

the rabbit balefully over its shoulder

expressing distaste for colonial rule.

 

 

Gallery of Tyranny

 

The bad boys in a class tend to stick together

not because nastiness loves company rather

because they're in a class of their very own 

where all others know it is folly pending upon

foolhardiness where reckless behaviour such as

entering their sullen retreat can result in a vicious

reaction of life-threatening dimensions. Bad boys

are those delinquents and social deviants who group

to torment others not of their ilk. They swagger

and pose as the demented brutes that they are

brutalizing the naive and helpless, threatening 

authority and the welfare of the majority through

their unhinged criminal acts leading from mere

threat to dire consequences. Their adult counterparts

roil the world community as leaders of nations

with a transitory acquaintance of quaint human rights

fully rejected as inconsequential to their strategic

goals of domination through conquest in a fully

armed antagonism to pleas from their civilized

counterparts to spare the world community from

their dehumanizing machinations in a stealth

campaign suddenly metamorphosed into war.

All The World's His Stage

DO NOT take your eyes off this man. Do

observe his eyes -  cold, hooded reptilian. Eyes

may be the mirror of the soul but if the soul is

absent in its place is sheer ambition to succeed

where others once reigned in torment to the

world they tyrannized. No force of arms nor

pleas moved them from their brutal onslaught

of all that was civilized, and nor will it this man.

His calculating mind instructed by a demented

drive to rule the masses, his own and that of 

other states knows no bounds of restraint. Should

he determine the time is right to strike he does.

Leaders of the free world shrink back in horror

in the unbridled lust for power at the cost of

lives other than his own, his grim countenance

lashing his generals to swift victory. But when 

his victim plays out the courage of resistance

on a bloody battlefield littered with the tyrant's

corpses he does not blanche. Looking outward to

his critics he reminds them that the very last word

is his, a nuclear arsenal at his disposal should

all else fail. His plans gone awry triggering a

final grim lashback of totalitarian nihilism

The Crystalized Wood

 

The Sky has rained frozen tears

for days, mourning the passage

of yet another year, bringing

us closer to old agedness.

How peculiar its empathy, for

we feel no such sorrow.

As we move through the woods

they too weep, but their grief

expresses their loss of twigs,

branches, limbs brought to

the snow-cushioned ground

with weight of snow and ice.

Tree trunks are glassed with ice

swaddling. The day mild enough

so droplets of melt move under

the ice sheathing like dark bugs

crawling down the trunk.

Finger-thick ice has brought

green boughs to utter decline

littering the forest floor. Above,

silently cruises the dark form

of a lonely crow. No wind, but

damp air and vanishing ice fog.

The sky, a bright pewter awning

has relented, halted its freezing

assault, and presents slivers of blue,

and there, the struggling sun. The

weeks-long frozen creek has won

its reprieve, runs free, burbling.

 

 

 

A World Of Ice

 

Overnight our world has been
transformed, the sound of rain
tinkling our doors and windows
when the ambient temperature
should result in soft, billowy
clouds of white snow crystals.

Through bedroom windows a
soft apricot glow spread interior
light where darkness should yet
have reigned, reflecting not snow
but the mysterious light of the
cosmos glancing off evanescent
and bright crystals of ice.

The upper atmosphere has
played its little end-of-year prank
and what has streamed earthward
from the vast winter sky helmeting
the ground below has gradually
inexorably sheathed everything below.

Every tree trunk, limb and branch
has been limned in silver-white
the weight bringing down pine
and cedar boughs to cling to their
trunks sturdily now encased in ice.

Rooftops formerly sugared high
with snow now bear brittle frozen
sheets of sheer ice thickening as
daylight brings night to its close.
No birds will fly this day, nor
furred creatures venture outward.

Few living creatures take delight
in this gleaming beauty of the night
nor the later increase of the bright
and fabulous landscape. Fantastical
traceries of laced embroideries
etched on windows newly glazed
reminiscent of finest Belgian lace.

The treachery of broken boughs
hydro lines breached in the urban
landscape, and roads and highways
rendered dangerous pays homage to
nature's affect. Boundless beauty on
the one hand, cruel danger on the other.

 

 

Freedom of Thought and Demeanor

 

If I honestly believe in the fullness of

my years and experience that biological

reality expresses the existence of two genders

and find it realistically and unreasonably

importunate that a conveniently refurbished

biological absolute of an assortment of

genders be recognized -- is my freedom of

thought, belief and utterances not being

impinged upon as a human right rejected?

If I have no argument with those expressing

their forceful beliefs of a multitude of genders

-- claimants to a new world order believing 

as they wish, but object to their obnoxious

and unwarranted insistence that I believe as

they do, who is the human rights abuser? Not

I. No, I would never support the imposition

of  transgender rights in society demanding

grammar and vocabulary be jettisoned to their

satisfaction, nor would I support assigning

the status of transphobic to any who demur.

It is my contention that those who insist on

forging the communion between 'cis' and

'trans' as a natural outcome of submission to

this new theology are, plain and simple

misanthropic to their core. Live with it.

Around Us

We take care with our two little dogs

to be aware of the presence of coyotes

in the forest, as we must. In a reversal of

the wild prowling after the tamed we worry

that neighbourhood cats may find the little

wild rabbit that is our neighbour irresistible.

The rabbit has a penchant for meditating on

our porch once it has filled its belly. But

it too is aware of the presence of predators

and even while resting peacefully maintains

its vigil. The pellets we once bought smelled

of grass but he refused them. More to  his

liking the peanuts and buttered bread squares

the squirrels and raccoons preferred and so 

did he. No celery, thank you very much, carrots 

are fine. And I wonder when the little creature

sits so still on our porch as is its nocturnal

habit under the stars, does he wonder at the

miraculous appearance of winter food?

 

 

The Mystery That Is Man

 

Man mystifies himself. From the cradle he

visualizes himself struggling against those

who would deprive him of his birthright as

he becomes evermore the grasping selfish

creature full blown given to threats and violence.

This is his primitive awareness of the world

and the rigours of existence where others too

seek out the fundamental necessities of life. It

is their reach to obtain their due that arouses

the sense of competitive danger. He also is

imbued with the sense of awe at his very

existence in a vast world that makes him wary

and fearful, searching the Empyrean blue for

comfort, sensing a spirit of divine creation and

a covenant inspired to peace among men. His

abiding fears firmly entrenched, faith enters the

realm of his thoughts in his devotion to a saint

of peace and human fellowship as he flaunts

the banner of theism and flouts the proscriptions

against violence and conflict, finally satisfied

that the  heavenly apparition hovering over him

applauds his sacrifices of human life as

offers of faith and enduring belief in the spirit

that enjoins its faithful to war against those

whose faith lies in the promise of an adversary.

Who can fault humanity modelling itself thus?

 

 

Clarifying The Language of Humanity

In an endless cycle of life and death each day 

pages of all the newspapers on Earth devoted to 

obituaries and new births flaunt congratulatory 

events and those of grave sorrow as individuals 

once thought of as men and women, girls and boys 

depart and arrive. It is difficult to credit how utterly

inadvertent humanity could have been in the past 

tens of thousands of years of historical documentation 

ascribing to humanity terms of male and female. 

It has taken millennia for the brilliant minds of the 

present to accurately interpret Nature's blueprint 

on peopling the planet. With the aplomb of full 

authority we are now advised to advance our faulty

vocabularies to match the apprehension of reality

in reflecting the presence of a multitude of genders.

Proscribed are those identifiers used with such

ease in the past; our grandmothers, mothers and

daughters, our grandfathers, fathers and sons 

have become egg-and non-egg-bearing persons

among whom there are those who menstruate

and those who do not. Ease of descriptive

language can be achieved simply by referring

to individuals as those who are XX or XY.

There, that should give Darwin's ghost pause.

 

 

What If? D.I.E.

What if in our human arrogance we have failed 

to recognize that the long series of pathogens that 

have plagued humanity from time immemorial

represent a sequence of extraterrestrials posing as

viruses with the express purpose of an experiment

in extinguishing an unworthy form of life littering

the universe? Only to discover that humanity is

a diabolical life form, a predator extraordinaire

whose presence evolved through a formula meant

to ensure its survival. What that succession of alien

visits has accomplished is merely to sieve out those

strains of humanity incapable of withstanding 

adversity to mutate stronger, more enduring and

dangerous to other forms of existence than ever.

Until the time when a mass psychosis enfeebled

human society convincing itself that established

biological verities identifying male and female

procreation and evolutionary success lacked the

oversight of diversity, inclusion and equality -- a

faulted oversight that must be remedied. Astonished

aliens, witness to the revolutionary self-destruction

finally understood that it is through its very own

very human devices the process of mass hysteria

would succeed where they have failed in the long 

and tardy departure of humanity from existence.

 

No Alien Invasion, Folks!

Theoretically these alpha elites occupy imperial thrones

none as powerful as they are in reach, influence and 

capacity to rule the world in the image of the ideology 

each administers, one counteracting the other in a

world of chaos and mayhem polarized as fiercely

competitive missions to sweep the globe in their image. 

Humanity has produced genius but none among them 

aspired to lead, content to express their gifted qualities

in disparate disciplines witnessing on the sidelines the

success or failure of executive administrators of polity 

each of whom believes his own genius equal to teaching 

Machiavelli new strategies. These leaders on the world 

stage poised in their verbal combat and military threats

 most recently fault one another over a new challenge 

of surveillance each accusing the other of overstepping 

aerial sovereignty. Now the champion of the free world

demonstrates the faculties of his mental genius by

glibly assuring the world that all is in good hands for

both he and his military are assured it is not aliens or 

any measure of extraterrestrial influence interested in 

covert scrutiny materializing in Earth's orbit preparatory 

to exterminating humanity but merely America's 

contemptible adversary here on Earth, emulating its 

own devious techniques, a precursor to conquest.

Language, the Quality of Mercy

Language has always been with us for we are 

gregarious creatures who tend to communicate 

and have done from the time the crucible of 

humanity threw off the shared physical traits of 

our animal origins to differentiate ourselves as 

protohuman and beyond mastering sound to 

match thought and gesture. So many languages 

languished and disappeared while some survived 

and served to separate us from one another. But

the universality of the language of emotions

reflect our origins and genetic endowments

for we all know the language of fear and devotion

hope and determination, anger and rage, love 

and compassion. They bind us in a silken manacle 

of defiance against those among us for whom the

language of emotions retain only those elements 

consonant with envy, greed and domination 

repressing those soothing expressions of faith and

understanding that sustain the persecuted benign or 

deadly as they reach out to others for comfort.

The Mind Encaged

 

Come to think of it, human technological

ingenuity created an alter-universe, one

where everything is contained, a complete

existence of thought and conclusion, data

infrastructure and cohesion in what otherwise

might be a vacuum but which humanity has

filled with the flotsam and jetsam of all that

concerns it. The metaphorical reach-out from

continent to continent, the babel of language

translated, the capacity to carry on the human

tradition of hostile repartee with those whose

truth tramples your own. We search for news

and it reaches out to us sending tentacles of

influence to tackle our brains. The Internet

has become the Master of All mustering the

entire population of this planet to its will in

an addiction of impositions stealing our lives

away. It is the great leveller the medium by

which anyone addresses everyone. For the first

time in human history this equalizer enables

the arrogant humble to address their political

masters, like intimate slave to royalty. No one

is immune from the spite that bubbles up, the

adoration that elevates, slander that denigrates

for we are as one enraptured and captured.

 

Inexplicably Deadly Hatred

How do you comfort and explain to the

confused, fearful child that it is not him

personally that bad men plan to murder. He,

the child is but a symbol of the visceral

and learned hatred of another child now a man

who nurses that hatred born of a grievance simply

not amenable to reason for the fires of rage

burn the human element to a crisp of 

unfiltered loathing within which humanity

may no longer reside. It is not he who

represents the target, that child of three or

four or six or eight years of living experience

but the cauldron of DNA that bred him as

a Jew which makes him guilty of creating

obstacles 'victimizing' opponents of the sacred

ancestral land of his forbears. The child is but

a symptom, a symbol, a syndrome innocent though

he personally is of the torment claimed by

those dedicated to the murder of Jews. You

say this patiently with the knowledge that

symptom though he may be, he has no escape

but good fortune if the plans of the terrorist 

bred  to, raised and nurtured on the fiction

that doling out death to Jews will amend

the future of his kind are foiled and the

Jewish child manages to survive. Those

that succumb to the frenzied hatred of a man

who was once a gullible child ingesting the

slander of hate have no need of explication.

Doing the Right Thing

The League of Nations accepted it lacked

the gravitas and influence to apprehend a

grisly annihilation of a people and stepped

aside in the greater interests of uniting nations

against future genocides. Its successor gravely

etched a pledge for the ages in human rights

entitlements and protection. When two fractious

tribes faced bloodbaths a plan for Partition

each accessing its own territory, sovereign and

free the Solomonic wisdom cleaving a baby

in two to settle two mothers' claims unseemly

soon collapsed. The people whose ancestral

land it was gained, its challengers lost and in

its compassion was born an agency of nations

united, charged with their welfare. A truly most

beneficent of agencies assuring those rejecting

their portion that their self-induced and so

comfortable victimhood was durable and as

such enduring. And so it has proved, from the

600,000 that fled a retaliatory conflict as a

strictly temporary phase in conquest, refugees

now number tenfold, demanding the entire

child, now a strong and mature adult able to

fend for itself as one of the wonders of the

ancient and the modern world of progress and

prosperity, yet one its erstwhile detractors

never tire of blaming and shaming, with

effusively damning slanders augmented by

psychotically-driven lethal assaults whose

purpose is to show the world how sadly

defenceless against tyranny victims can be.

Towers of Babel

History and humanity have an irreverent

penchant for repetition for everything old

becomes new again. In this era remarkable

advances in technology have given the world

a towering edifice of babel where all speak

their exclusionary tongues and none fully

comprehend while condemning the great

social upheaval marching through time and

science, humanity and history. Social media

has become a library of phenotypes reaching

with blind conviction into the environment of

livid experience, hordes of refugees streaming

from entire nations become battlefields, migrants

seeking a world other than their own, men and

women fleeing their roles assigned by nature 

re-arranging and expunging vocabularies at will

even while tribal, sectarian, ideological mentors

scream imprecations of dire malediction  at their

opposites risking toxic apoplectic oblivion.

The languages of blame, of victimhood, of war

of theological doom, of entitlement and virtue

their vocabularies cunningly intrusive yet

shadowy and begrimed with the dust of ages.

The Horde Advances

.

Where, then, in the world is there not endemic 

poverty, violence, drug addiction, crime, racism 

threats, conflict, religious persecution, sectarian 

and tribal violence? As the world grows smaller 

through ease of travel and communication 

the problems multiply like a deadly infection that 

knows no boundaries. National borders in fact 

are being erased as the world moves inexorably 

toward post-nationalism evidenced by hordes of

migrants on the move, relentlessly enduring

hardships but wedded to the fixed intention

of establishing their futures elsewhere. They

move singly and en masse immune to voices

abroad shouting 'we have no room!' for they

will not believe that the wealthy nations of the

world are also stricken with poverty, disease

crime and misery; there they mean to establish

themselves, take advantage of everything good

they've ever heard, leaving behind want and

fear for the sages knew of what they spoke

uttering that hoary phrase that others have

what they do not in greener pastures. It is not

the poor launching themselves on these journeys

but the privileged escaping limited options, those

with the wherewithal to pay for the privilege of

surreptitiously yet aggressively crossing borders

as illegal entrants that no cautions and no

security barriers, and no policing can stop.

Demonic Possession

They draw at tender heartstrings

those cherubic faces with their

dancing eyes and questing minds

eager to learn and be regarded as

clever little pantomimists, ready to

please, straining to be recognized.

The soft, rounded contours of their

faces, not yet whispering of the 

tough angular lines that will succeed

in adulthood, grasp for opportunities

to demonstrate how prepared they are

to join the adult world. They avidly

watch and listen and emulate, happy

to repeat what they have learned by

rote, those clever little mimics. And

so their future becomes dimmed by

the reality of those who nurture in them

a passion to submit, to view death

as a gift to G-d, convinced by those

committed to corrupting young minds

and ushering them toward the Angel of

Death that theirs is a godly mission.

 

Nature's Fragile Creations

Tempestuous and capricious

Nature creates and she destroys

with equal disregard for outcomes.

She is the Force Majeure that 

has the final word on existence

and she exercises that privilege

abandoning her creatures to the

terror of her unappeasable rages

that simmer subterraneously until

such time as the Earth's mantle

erupts with deadly force implacably

shattering the surface symmetry

of pedestrian life transformed to a

panic of helpless terror as all made

by humankind is destroyed along 

with nature's fragile creations.

When Satyrs Become Nymphs

Don't we chuckle at the utterly naive

simplicity of mind of pagan peoples

wise enough to produce philosophers 

whose wisdom echoes down the ages

but gullible enough to believe in the

panoply of gods and their retainers.

Of satyrs and nymphs, the cunning

manipulation of the former and the

sweet innocence of the latter. Yet it

took the enlightened era of the present

where intellect and rationality became

fond bedfellows that satyrs have turned

into nymphs. The judge sentencing a rabid

rapist - declaring himself transgender -

intoned considering sentencing that 'she

used her penis to rape the victims'. Then

too the sensitive declaration of 'people

who menstruate' lest transgendered

women feel aggrieved, ignored and

belittled. Who knows, those pagan gods

might be leaning down from their

heavenly perches eager to enjoy the

most recent scandalous escapades

of pathetic humanity's latest theology.

Um ... sorry, what was that question 

again? Has the world gone mad?

The Man That Time Begat

 

You were the boy of my dreams long idealized 

formed whole in the recesses of my deep 

subconscious, suddenly appearing before me 

the childhood companion yearned after. No

mere figment of a feverishly longing imagination 

but a living partner in the promise of a shared

life. Together we explored the outer reaches of  

the beckoning horizons of chance and fortune

while the pedestrian gently intruded and we 

made of them binary promises facing tomorrow. 

The tomorrows duly arrived and they left us

in the firm presence of succeeding days, each 

suffused with love and care, melding us within 

a unitary sum of our parts; body and soul. The 

journey has been long yet fleeting leaving us 

forever young, the boy in the visage of the man 

the woman cleaving to the man that time begat.

 

The Gift of Humility

 

The principle of philanthropic generosity

is to share, to give to those who have nothing

themselves to give and that gift is best realized

when it is proffered anonymously. This then

represents the very height of magnanimity, a

hidden gift given where it is needed absent

recognition by the giftee, the apotheosis of

generosity, the delivery of aid unacknowledged

but by the obvious gap it fills, of comfort in the

assurance that someone cared. When such a

gift is given that demands of the gifter a true

sacrifice in diminishing their own situation in

life making the gift all that more precious, is 

not its significance diminished when made 

public knowledge, a boast of generosity and does

it not lose its status when the needy accepts such

a public offering while the gifter beams in pride?

 

Peoples of Antiquity

Assyrians swept through the landscape of the

Near East like a raging tornado, their fierce warrior

conquest of the lands they occupied tolerating

no desperate resistance from the authentic historical

dwellers they drove into exile. Now where are

they? Wandering the world in lands that regard

them as inferior permitting no return to their

ancient dominance, now impotent and despised 

bewailing their fate unsung and merely tolerated. 

The ancestral lands of ancient Kurdistan await their

reclamation should Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria ever

relinquish what is not theirs by Kurds bemoaning

they have No Friends But The Mountains, justice eluded. 

Ancient Israelites wandering the face of the Earth 

for millennia finally returned to their dispossessed 

heritage prevailing in restoring themselves to their 

sacred Biblical origins realized when Next Year in

Jerusalem arrived in the wake of a paroxysm of

unendurable mass slaughter. Now once again a power

in their own regional defence, offering righteous haven

to those who aspired to their destruction even as

while enjoying the largess of the state the plotters 

scheme and incite as victims indulging revolt. 

The Privilege of Entitlement

It was a partially sunny afternoon

the winter sun brightly warming 

the atmosphere but in the ravine

no sun penetrated the forest canopy

for on the horizon the sun was

already setting blazing below the

silver-white snowclouds overtaking

the ceiling of the sky. In the far

distance a black speck was seen

rapidly descending a snow-packed hill

and seconds later the speck became

a snow-accoutred dog bounding

up the opposite hill the man who dispensed

cookies was descending. Old friends

well met, the Vizsla sat biddably at

the man's side no longer in anxious

anticipation, patiently awaiting his

prize, then each went on their way.

In the course of the following hour 

each on separate forest trails divided

by hills and valleys, an icy forest

stream and intersecting ridges in a

varied topography, the dog returned

for seconds before dashing off again

and finally made a third brief stop 

claiming the privilege of entitlement.