Crave New World

Early psychology was replete with odd physical cases

most of general society had no idea existed whereas the 

demi monde craved exposure to the entire spectrum

of human sexual adventures and biological oddities

to ease the burden of boredom. There were learned

treatises of 'penile envy' attributed to women who

yearned to have the power characteristics of a male

society, but were there then any scholars who might

have suspected an entirely unknown pathology of

breast-and/or-vaginal envy where males of the human

species yearned for female attributes, denying their

own physical characteristics identifiable as male?

Has the world just suddenly awakened to a new reality

of chaotic biological exceptions divorced from the

cultural/social/scientific norm or are we witnessing

an odd transition from science to storied fantasy

where the chimeras of a new social culture crept

into the neat demarcations of gender to present an

entirely other utterly fantastical illusion of life?

 

 

The Feral Quest of Conquest

Among those of sound mind and clear judgement

it was always noted with a sense of bemusement 

that there appeared to be a greater number of 

specimens of humanity whose cerebral function 

seemed less than optimal so perhaps it should 

not be terribly surprising that mental illness seems

to be affecting ever larger proportions of the

population given the news that in the UK that

bastion of grim humour and pompous aristocracy

the workforce is suffering from absenteeism

and a shrinking number of employment-ready

individuals of whom claims are made linking

the populace with growing mental incapacity. 

Can a mere virus accomplish such an outcome on

this wide a scale? For the phenomenon has been 

linked to the advent of the pandemic and its after

source. Might it be further feasible that global conflict 

outbreaks have broken humanity's aversion to wanton 

slaughter on the battlefield to account for increasingly 

hostile encounters morphing into flares of sectarian

tribal and internecine warfare; a virus unleashing

the feral quest of conquest and territorial plunder?

Spring's Consolation

Although spring with all its coquettish

promises has finally arrived she finds

a forest in mourning, its crown reduced

the forest floor a sad litter of limbs and

branches torn from trunks and sadly

strewn, a cemetery of split trunks and

pathetic snags whose torn remnants gaze

in sorrow at a sky now benign but a fury

of misery during the months of winter when

micro-bursts of furiously destructive wind 

interminable snowstorms, freezing rain 

and ice storms tormented the tired forest 

from saplings to venerable old giants. It is 

a morose mood that permeates this forest 

despite spring's premise that all will be well. 

A bemused spring responds as only she can

warming the chill of the sorrowful atmosphere

calling on the sun to illuminate the sad wanton 

massacre of the forest canopy and urging the 

early forest flowers to spread the cheer of their

brilliant colour over the still-sere landscape.

Progress In Transition

The word is progress, a defined and desirable

condition in humanity's ongoing quest for meaning 

and purpose. What could go wrong? It depends 

on whether you are deemed to be in the progressive 

camp or whether you become a sideswept rejection 

of the progressive mind. It sounds so very benign and

forward-looking, that proudly stated commitment to

social progress, making the world a better place. It is

perhaps a distant offshoot in time of the Enlightenment

when values gave rise to visions of equality and

acceptance; liberty for all to do, to think for themselves 

and embrace diversity as a just and lasting virtue. 

Before the enlightened masses discarded rejection

contempt and discrimination against Jews came 

the final reckoning of an ancient pathology after 

which it became a shameful social incorrectness 

to spout antisemitism. When came a state of their 

dedicated own, progressives became convinced 

that slander and rejection had its place after all 

renewing Jew-hate for the higher purpose of

empathizing with Arab antagonists who convincingly

re-wrote history to proclaim themselves authentic

inheritors of ancient Judaea, not Judeans. So it is

that Jews in Israel surrounded by lethal threats

must also relive that history of venomous hatred for

the audacity of forging a return to their ancestral home.

A response to the rejection of the great wide world

once complicit in genocide, now committed to return

to the social environment that bred the Holocaust.

 

 

The Ancent Primitive Pathogen of Venomous Antisemitism

It is such an outstandingly fine and comforting fact

that the world community is represented

by a body whose sole purpose is to advance

humanity in its goal to accomplish peace

between nations and uphold the universal

qualities of human rights. It is such a mean

and dispiriting reality that the world community

has perverted that fine mission to more closely

resemble actual truths that among its member

nations a scant few are interested in human

rights and among them conflicts between one

another and those of an internal nature

between conflicting ideologies and sects

tribes and clans, dictators and tyrants become

the very entities that control and command that

august institution and its many satellites in

the exceedingly narrow interests they invariably

represent in power to be wielded and stature to

be upheld in the authority of canted politics and

economics and above all ensuring that nations

representing the very deep issues of humanity's

enlightened interactions are continually condemned

and isolated. Among them one alone stands as the

singular nation whose values and laws demonstrate

how possible it is that a warm and welcoming

nation can embrace a multitude of variants in

humanity to live together in harmony, yet that

nation and the people of its ancient ancestry are

now as they always have been isolated, spurned

threatened and condemned in a symbolic and very

real travesty of justice spurred by the ancient  

primitive pathogen of venomous antisemitism.

Self as Central Attraction

Who are these people and how can they be

so self-absorbed to the point of oblivion to the

presence of others around them, so enthralled

by themselves yet lacking self-awareness?

They who monopolize the very air we all must

breathe, the public space we all move about in

their emotions a deep well of their advantage and

conceit of being there, doing that, an engagement of

self within a surrounding meant exclusively for 

their exploitation. Their self-adoration is both

subliminal and visceral, no second thoughts

no apprehensions, no inclination to self diagnose.

A destination chosen as a signal of inclusion

and sorrow but a facade for the scant few for

whom the occasion is a feint; look at me, I was

there; not in pain and remembrance mourning the

dead and the monstrous singular event of mass

annihilation but a theatrical setting of rare scarcity

for a languorous pose of casual adventurism to

be shared among the latte-favouring cliques of

today for whom their freedom as Jews in greater

society followed the sacrifice of innocent lives

their elders believed would settle, once and for all

the age-old question What makes a Jew a Jew?

 

 

The Fear of Death

 

These planned and executed consequences

are the inevitable result of rough justice

as in cause and effect when no other avenue

is open to contain, suppress and punish

the abhorrent minds that nurse terror as a

remedy for victimhood, both conditions

self imposed and both hugely valued as a

reflection of a culture which boasts it is a

close companion and friend to death going

so far as to claim death as the golden key 

to Paradise except for the victims whose

lives are taken as gifts to a version of the

Almighty that relishes the concept of murder

as an act of sacred martyrdom. The very

leaders of this death cult specializing in the

slaughter of Jews who crow and boast in

celebration of Jewish death accomplished 

by their foot soldiers in terror themselves

however fear death, warning Israel, the

target of Islamist bile of consequences 

unleashed should they be targeted by the

agents defending the lives of innocents

by removing the life of their predators.

 

 

A Guide To Tolerance

 

Jews are undoubtedly the most tolerant people 

on the face of this planet for theirs is the ancient 

experience brought forward through the ages 

of forceful tolerance of exile when those not 

slaughtered by Rome were forcibly scattered 

among the nations of the Earth in a search for safety 

and freedom and a possible future for generations

to come. Where they found themselves scorned and

set aside forcibly into ghettos lest their presence 

besmirch others. Jews learned to tolerate blood libels 

for there was no other choice. Mere existence became 

complicated by tolerating auto da fes as punishment

to heretics among the godly. No option other than 

to tolerate oppression, denigration, libel, racism

discrimination, humiliation, pogroms -- above all

the genocidal intention of mass annihilation. Now

with return to ancient Judaea reclaiming indigenous

ancestral homeland, Jews tolerate the presence of 

an alien religion's shrine over Judaism's most sacred 

Temple site in their ancient capital of Jerusalem. 

Jews on their return to Israel tolerate those in their 

midst who wish them harm. And when the Jewish

state defends Jews from deadly terror, the world

looks on and bids them to exercise restraint in the

finer interests of tolerance of constant terrorism

existential threats and burgeoning antisemitism.

Imperial Russia

Nature could do no worse than to blend

a formula that would take a reclusive

megalomaniac with psychopathic tendencies

gifting him with powers of persuasion

fortified by years of cunning preparation in

his declaration of possessing the soul of an

ancient people given to aggression over its

lesser neighbours distilled into a mind weighted

with misanthropy. All these attributes raging

in the persona of a man convinced that the

ghosts of previous national tyrants rest in him

propelling him to the restoration of their rancid

hold over a nation held ransom to ideology

geared to subjugate while heralding itself as a

liberating theology of equalization and duty to

raise the nation to great heights of commanding

glory, a hegemon stretching its tentacles to 

embrace the geographic heritage of others in

the pretence of benign collaboration yet prepared

to lethally strike protests of lost sovereignty. 

The Vagaries of Special Military Operations

In competitive sports, as in its alter-ego war

opponents face off to achieve victory and it is not 

unknown for one team to haphazardly outdo itself

in blocking a score by its own team alternately

erroneously assisting a competitor to score. These 

untoward events carry over into conflict where 

armies fighting on the same side occasionally 

bomb one another; misadventures named 'friendly fire'.

How often does it occur that a fighter pilot imagines 

himself over enemy territory and unleashes a bomb 

on his own home geography in a spectacular instance 

of an aggressor nation convincing its military that the

invaded nation is no nation at all, but a part of their own

that must be reclaimed handing a courteous reason for

jubilation to the valorous nation defending its sovereign 

state against an aggressor in conquest delirium?

Pre-Surgery

 

I am by nature of my singular personality quite

reserved, an introvert, for though I like people

well enough I value my privacy even more.

My position somewhat compromised of late

when total strangers have been lecturing me

informing me of what I may and may not do.

Asking a multitude of probing questions as

personal as I would never imagine asking of

others. Prompting me to repeat my name

my date of birth, taking notes and commenting

on matters I would normally take offence with.

Yet adding to this litany of intrusions and gross

affronteries the laying on of hands where others

would dread to dare as I am ordered to submit

when eye-stinging substances are dropped into 

my heavenward-gazing eyes. But there is no

rescue from this plight as the calculating minds

behind these ministrations coolly make notations

generally comporting themselves with the authority

of those with the attributes of healers of human ills.

Leadership

By and large we are a dull lot, humanity.

Given the opportunity to govern ourselves 

wisely, we fail every test that time and need

offers such that we learn that our need is not

necessarily the mother of their invention. Among

us there are those believing their qualities

include that of leadership who invariably do

lead; unfortunately badly astray. By general

agreement we acknowledge that order and

security must be foremost among our needs

in defence against the sociopaths and their

sibling psychopaths for whom the public

weal translates as a private avenue to wreak

violence among the trusting and the weak. At

any given time there will arise a malcontent

raising the banner of revolt against the mores

that bar their ilk from regulating and restraining

the lives of the placidly obtuse aggregate. The

credulous respond to the exterior charm cloaking

a malevolent mission to tyrannize, elevating

to executive governance those unfit to direct any

society, channeling its resources to themselves

while leaving the populace to fend for itself.

In democracies no less than in dictatorships the

public become 'extras' in a political drama 

geared to the avails of the few depriving the many.

 

 

Perchance to Dream

 

We take our weary selves to bed each night

reliving in our minds events that took us

through a well-lived day, a diurnal review

accounting that either gives us comfort or

pause for second thought yet before that

second thought emerges from a brain drowsy

with oncoming sleep we succumb and it is

no more. Unless deep in sleep the life that

was set aside in favour of renewal brought

us to the stage of ongoing events occurring

to someone who resembles ourselves, even

surrounded by familiar environments set to

enact yet another scene of an ongoing drama

not quite our own even in its familiarity for

the cast though resembling us is different. It

is that same brain diligently working overtime

to entertain and bemuse us promising if we

sleep well yet another installment of life will

appear, unaccountable and mysterious, not ours.

 

 

Stewardship of a Planet

 

The sheer unmatched genius of nature's 

creative energy is manifest in her love

of variety and the paramount choices

she indulges in her busy workshop 

balancing the chemistry of existence

against indifferent reactions manifest

in tolerance of her other creations in the

elements of time, space, vacuum, velocity

of light and her storied manipulation of

all she has created.  A work of awe and

delight, mysterious and inspiring. Immense

in totality and all-absorbing as she delicately

manoeuvres spheres with various attributes

consumed by the weight of responsibility

leading to attention lapses in monitoring

the fate of discrete creations. Did she know 

and does she care that her offspring serve

themselves so ill abusing and looting the

very foundations of their shared world 

in incremental steps destroying the unique

living legacy in stewardship of a planet?

Perilous Chaos of Existential Threats

The primitive brain knows the stratagem

that nature engineered into the DNA of

her creatures and so the frail vulnerable of

her creatures are small, instinct instructing them

to a discreet presence in contrast to the brash

largely aggressive creatures as born predators.

The human race with its superior comprehension

knows that in animal confrontations the object

is to signal an antagonist creature the advantage

of size, so a bear stands upright and bellows.

Humankind too acknowledges size; the larger

the explosive device the more threat it is of

maximum damage. Antagonistic nations develop

weapons of massive destruction as deterrence

then conduct 'tests' whose performance acts as

that bellowing bear. Responding antagonists run

war games deploying unified weapons of war to

counter the initiator whose neurosis of paranoia 

demands ever more advanced weapons in a theatre

of mass psychosis, the endless cycle of threat and

response that will erupt into perilous chaos. 

Restoration

 

This has been a long winter. A difficult winter

for the forest. Pummeled by cold, ice and snow

the forest canopy was forced to surrender itself to

the condition of a climax forest, shedding the old

and the weak. Corpses of once-stout trees have fallen

to the forest floor as though a giant hand had carelessly

plucked them from their allotted place as honoured

forest occupants then tossed them as litter, trunks

crowding the forest floor. Fierce winds repeatedly

assaulted the forest, ice storms battered the pine trees

burdening them into fragility to the incessant winds.

Feeble in its winter sleep the forest suffered silently

a graveyard of scant resemblance to the vibrant green

of summer months. Then spring arrived and the sun

cast its brilliance over the ailing woods and suddenly the

sodden leaf mass of the forest floor was rent by bright

yellow heads of Coltsfoot. Hazelnut shrubs dangled their 

catkins and bright red florets dappled maple crowns

while a soft haze of green spread over tall poplars.

In a return-migration, a pair of old familiars appear to

steam comfortably along the snow-melt forest stream

as the forest hosts returning Mallards. Mourning Cloaks

drift lazily on spring air currents as life re-commences

and the forest resumes its endless cycle of restoration.  

The Giant's Inglorious End

 

The first time we entered the forest a

lifetime ago it stood massive, a sentry

and a monarch of pines impressive in its

girth and solemn presence for none others

evoked that sense of awe at its timeless

presence such that one wondered what 

it had been witness to in the long since past.

In every season it stood there clamped

to the forest floor, impassive and stalwart.

Raging storms hurled through the forest

prostrating lesser trees on their way to challenge

the old pine. There were microburst tornadoes

and derechos, fierce winter ice storms and

springtime tempests all too tame to ruffle

the pine's stout limbs. In time the tree bent to

the winds and began its slant like an old man's

bent back until its lean toward the forest floor 

warned of impending disaster. The tree that had

hosted bees, owls, squirrels nesting in its 

capacious interior met one too many of

nature's challenges and last night surrendered.

The Ill Wind That Blows No Good

Rational minds can be forgiven for their

skeptics' belief that those who nourish the

emotions of hatred and victimhood cannot be

serious to the extent that they forego any and 

all opportunities to forge for themselves a

meaningful life in favour of expounding

on the sinister afflictions they have suffered

at the hands of a merciless enemy to the

preferred option of self-reliance and dignity

have not yet met the aggrieved calling

themselves Palestinians. That the reality

is their pathology is firmly lodged in a

fantasy which led them to adopt an identity

not their own and claim an ancestry not

theirs as well as a geographical location

belonging to others are inconvenient details

not worth considering. And so, since there

is nothing rational about abusive slander and

far less forgiveness for lethal violence it

can safely be assumed that an ongoing

condition of mass dementia pollutes their

minds as they rage and campaign with the

endless devotion to victimhood that is theirs.

Compromise

 

Well yes, we're fairly pleased

with the little fellows. Mind

they do have a robust sense of

entitlement but it is leavened with

an air of fairness though they're

not entirely averse to compromise

as in they feel it is fair to their

aspirations that we concede and

compromise. So they agree to

suffer the ignominy of our

offering them dog food, never

mind its sterling quality, as long

as we also render unto the master

race their just due. They have

magnanimously negotiated their

just due in exchange for agreeing

to keep household peace, and we 

are duly grateful. Therefore choice

tidbits of whatever we presume to

eat openly in their presence must

be apportioned; to each his due

in this progressive household. And

all, they assure us, is forgiven.

 

 

Apparition

 

The sun withheld its presence on a drab grey

early spring day long before the forest canopy

fleshed its green buds, at a time when winter's

snow pack yet remained on the forest floor

and wind shuffled bare branches where tiny

birds sought shelter. Suddenly the appearance

of a spring mirage, as though a forest nymph

had emerged from a tree to smilingly confront

my presence, beside her two small naiads all

shyly stationed before the bridge crossing the

forest stream. Three narrow heads capped with

streaming hair of ebony glistening with a

fey mysterious light clad in pastels of floral

pink, leaf-green and molten gold. They led me 

to linger as we spoke the pleasantries of nature. 

I who love nature and they whose glowing

presence is nature's gift to the forest they inhabit.

 

Inheriting Deadly Malice

In childhood the mind is a greedy sponge 

awaiting the irrigation of ideas, a vestibule 

maintained close at hand, files withdrawn at will

where the young and credulous habitually

store the tribal files of prejudices that will

sustain them throughout a lifetime of ancestral

indoctrination valued as verities held by

their elders passed on through generations

based on ancient interactions with those

whose presence became a challenge in the

acquisition of limited existential resources 

translated to the present. Visceral reactions

in reflection of hostile perceptions incited by

current events drive the lust for revenge against

those presumed to have plotted sacrilegious

assaults by one sect against the other. Venom

spills across the ages in fiery threats finally

culminating in slaughter,  justified by those posing

as victims avenging imagined conflict not yet

materialized yet pathologized in perpetuity.

I Am Woman

 

How did I feel about it? Shaken to my very

core. When it was happening -- embarrassed

for him, that very old man with the hobbled gait

and white head whose hand I suddenly felt 

groping under my briefcase laid in my lap

on the bus travelling to my workplace. His

face when I turned to look revealed nothing

features stolid, eyes straight ahead but this was 

not my imagination; each time I thrust his hand

off me it was returned. As strong as I was -- a

woman in her mature years -- he was, this pitiful

old man, stronger as his hand disembodied from

his control groped and gripped until I fled. Not

a word, anxious no one should know. He would be

long dead now, and I am now his age. Importuned

by young men on social media though I have

posted my age. Pitiable the birthright of pure male

entitlement, no less so my restraint in hesitating to

bring embarrassment to uncontrite moral morons.

 

 

In Compassionate Memory

Once of an early morning as dawn was

breaking beyond the surrounding mountains

bringing light to the land of the exotic East

we heard the sonorous murmur of the

tonsured monks seen in devout prayer

the night before resounding softly from 

the hills above drifting down to where we 

delicately trod the stones carefully placed to 

confine a brook gently moving its lucent

journey through the serene garden of the

monastery above, glistening golden carp 

lazily drifting within the pellucid waters 

taking no notice of the ubiquitous stone forms

strewn here and there, the child-like figure 

of the Jizo Buddha knitted-bonnet-capped

baby toys and baby garments by their side 

mournfully grieving the loss of those

whose births were apprehended in a recall

of the mysterious ways of nature's promise.

The Merciless Strongman

Perhaps it makes perfect sense that a delusional

autocrat obsessed with the personal grandeur

of having achieved the ultimate position of

command would feel entitled to an escape from

the rigours of demand performance requiring 

extravagant palaces built throughout his

capacious territory yet hungering for more

orders his troops to a full-scale invasion of a

neighbour's sovereign lands for incorporation

into his own, allowing his military free reign to

loot and to rape and murder at will for this is the

way of triumphant conquest. It is little wonder that

a mind so corrupted would develop a phobia

of being felled by a dread disease against which

his palaces become hermitages, his aides devoted

on pain of death to forestalling poisoned food or

the stealth entry of an assassin. His dreams of power

and conquest achieved, his life become a tomb.  

Divine Dominion

If the Deity to whom humankind prays to for

compassion and forgiveness is the essence

of the ultimate attributes of Omnipotence

Omniscience and Omnipresence it is a mystery

that this powerful Spirit of Consciousness

Wisdom and Awareness endowed humanity

with such traits as the will to conquest and

oppress, justifying mass bloodshed in its quest

to command while sacrilegiously claiming they

act on a mission that God commanded. For that

God is the fount of other traits ingrained in humanity

that of pitiless aggression pitting one segment of

humanity against another in violence until they

submit to the command of the other for they have

been well schooled in the demands made of them

by the Ultimate Creator of their singular mission

as faithful adherents to convert all non-believers

in the Spirit's Divine Presence to inspire humanity

to devote itself to pleasing the Spirit's jealous

nature despite bestowing upon those creations

a goodness list of what must be done and what

must not be done in a just world. Such a world

that the Great Creator itself holds beneath the

dignity of its own motivating force of dominion.

The Ice Storm

 

Lest there be doubt that this is an ill-tempered

ill-destined day, the heavens bellow and boom

their rage, thunder rolling across the darkened

sky despite the land below steeped deep yet

in snow. Ice falls from the sky. There is conflict

between the choices of snow and rain despite

that the day is shiveringly cold but the weather

has chosen freezing rain, rain pellets and hail

to counter early spring's melt-mode of the

diminishing snow pack tamped firm in layers

of snow and ice. The wind roars and whips

sharp balls of ice everywhere on the shrinking

landscape. Wildlife remain pensively still

patiently waiting for the glassy ice surfacing

relentlessly on trees, threatening to sever

branches from trunk, to spend its passion.

O Canada!

When does a parliamentary democracy

become a consensual dictatorship? Perhaps

when its executive body deep-seated in

Parliament becomes committed not to the

weal of the common good of its society

but to the freakish ideology of a whimsical

prime minister who admires the efficient

drive of ideological tyrannies and muses

how their successes can be stitched on to

the fabric of a liberal democracy besotten

as well with progressive ideals that upturn

all the norms upon which the public weal

is familiar based firmly on the science of

reason and biology, economics and frugality

in the greater interests of leaving a nation's

culture, heritage and values to gather dust;

out of  sight out of mind. Matters of ethical

concerns matter not at all to those for whom

ethics mean nothing, driven to convert a nation

to a vision adapted from a global experiment

in diversity, inclusion and equality in an epic

journey to transform humanity through a wild

evolutional spiral where those who survive

will be incapable of reproducing themselves

but the outcome represents unnatural success.

 

Wholesomely Yours

What could possibly be more comforting
than to know that no matter how you
disport yourself, irregardless of the 
manner in which you may be regarded by
the rest of the world your family will always
stand by your side. As an ego restorative there
is nothing quite like an abundance of allies
who share a significant quality that you also
are part of and as brothers are foursquare
with you. Sudan's ruler may be regarded as
a mass murderer, but there he is pledging
loyalty to you, Syria's butcher. And though
the Arab League's 22 member-states saw
fit to disown you Bashar al-Assad, blood
will always win out even if sectarian ties
separate you for you are Arab born and as
such belong to this distinguished gallery of
thugs and mass murdering states ruled by
royalty, rabid theocrats, tyrants and sheiks
military leaders all backgrounded by clerics
who never hesitate to issue deadly fatwas
against any who decry the world of Islam's
basic tenet of bringing peace to the world by
embarking on a jihad against the nations of
war deigned such for refusing to submit. You
Assad, will be enjoined to rejoin the Arab
League for their members have missed your
presence and in an act of magnanimity now
pledge to endorse your bloodbathed presence.

 

Cognition Impaired

You always suspected as much did you not?

In a sense astonished, the lengths to which

people will go to demonstrate their awe 

and admiration for those in the public view

considered extraordinary for singular talents

and imagined gifts of rare quality. Seems

others whose thoughts go slightly deeper

than the envious percolations of adulation

tinged with resentment whose accolades of

the seemingly accomplished leads to hordes

of admirers going to great lengths to form

cliques devoted to the pedestalled heights of

veneration toward entertainers, royalty

academic darlings of the day, courageous

suffering outliers and their ilk never for one

moment suspecting that their elevation of these

rare creatures have created their status built

on a bulwark of celebrity-subservience itself

teetering on the brink of the illusion that an

element of that sparkle reflects their own as

yet unrecognized, just waiting to be discovered.

Arise, April has Returned!

April honours her timeless pact

with nature to enter the season

of spring to once again and

forevermore nudge cranky old winter

from its incorrigible longing to

forever reign over a frozen white

landscape of scintillating beauty

whose presence though enchanting

casts a spell over all that is green and

thrives in the warmth of a renascent

sun. The struggle between the two

ancient protagonists amidst the anxiety

of all that grows to break free from

the frozen soil is not without its

drama in alternate skies of brilliant

sun and lowering clouds releasing

late-season winter snowstorms until

nature finally intervenes to exile winter

and redeem spring's flagging hope.