 |
| Abbey Ruins |
The wall stands
on the silent landscape
rough grey granite
drywall no mortar
gluing its oneness
hints of a fireplace.
Now the underbrush intrudes
forest pushing back memory
birds loop the lonely air
and forest creatures
shelter under its shadow.
It could be the
ruins of Ilium
of a Minoan palace
or even Dresden. The
causes as diverse as
a wooden horse
Santorini
or Allied bombers. This
wall speaks of the
inevitability of time
flux wrought by nature
by the nature of man.
As dawn reaches its early
fingers of tentative light past
the dark sentinels of night
chickadees make their morning
pilgrimage to our bird feeder,
and a downy woodpecker picks
mightily at the suet cluster
while juncos gather the fallen
seed and a cardinal patiently
awaits his turn at the communal
avian feed. Later, drowsy-headed
squirrels make their querulous
appearance in the cold dawn
hours bypassing the bird feeder
for their very own feeding
pavilion even as a nuthatch
hangs above and the feisty
red squirrel, fierce in its
minuscule authority, arrogates
to itself disciplinary action
over its timorous black and
grey cousins so much larger
yet so much more passively
submissive among the orderly
slate of welcome daily visitors.
An aura of expectation hangs
on the atmosphere, or perhaps
it's only us, yet it seems
as though late afternoon
appears anxious to meet its
appointment with evening
too soon transforming from
the white brilliance of a sun
dappled snowy forest to a
long-shadowed, furtive woodscape.
As the temperature drops
so too does the sun, hovering
on the horizon catching the
bare-limb canopy to set it afire
but briefly as dusk descends
and the moon assumes her
bright oval throne, and our
boots crunching on the ice
crystals overlaying snow, we
stride the forest pathways
toward home and warmth,
our little winter-coated dog
trotting companionably beside.
It is their natural environment
their habitat, into which we
intrude without so much as a
by-your-leave of arrogant
entitlement for we control
all we survey and they are
after all, only animals of the wild.
Our homes are built where once
they roamed unhampered by our
presence, setting boundaries
through which they may not
venture for if they do we
designate the nuisance and
threats whose presence must
be addressed by means foul.
Those creatures have no access
to means by which they may
solve the nuisance and danger
we represent through the
hazards we pose trespassing
on their territory, the homes
that nature has suited them for
and so the tensions of co-existence
favour the bipedal opposed-thumb
animals distressing all others.
Strolling along a woodland trail
of a winter day, encounters though
unexpected do occur and where
before you is a strange but somehow
familiar face, you struggle with
memory to place that nudge of
familiarity, finally conjuring up
the image of a small grey dog with
oddly spiked hair, narrow snout
horned ears and wild eyes, with the
gentle name of Rachel. And you ask
at greeting before moving on, though
somehow you know, as a slow smile
is followed by the affirmation that
the little dog who uncannily resembled
a werewolf but comported herself
like a romping, friendly puppy, so
menacingly fierce in appearance that
people shrank back in fearful dismay
at her presence though loved by those
who knew her and her sweet temperament
died four years ago, leaving a deeply sad
vacancy that time has not yet healed.
Ah, how one pines for days
gone past, when a pioneer spirit
motivated our sturdy predecessors
to embark on long sea voyages to
newly discovered lands, in escape
from the suffocating poverty and
class struggles of the old land so
grimly abandoned, high expectations
of diligent hard work in land clearing
a beacon of future prosperity. Free
free at last in a new country beckoning
with its siren song of forests and lakes,
arable land and plentiful game -
and yes, as neighbours, indigenous
people who intimately knew the
land, knew winter cold and survival
techniques. Knew to follow the
wild herds in seasonal migration.
Knew the quality of botanical specimens
as medications, knew constant conflict
with competing tribes, knew they
would have to share access to fishing
and hunting, growing of crops, and
of course, exposure to dire seasonal
elements of climate, disease and
privation; above all, competition
for scarce resource entitlements. All,
all this and more in the glorious past.
Humankind has forged great strides
from our primitive distant past
to master the inventive intricacies
of science and modern technology
the forward momentum staggering
in its speed of development and
breadth of utility. Then, and now and
again a reminder that our triumphs
pale in comparison to our primitive
emotions stalling at the tribal
sectarian, chauvinistic primal state
where blood and belonging,
territorial gain, cupidity and deep
sanctimony reign supreme, compelling
those of faint conscience and urges
toward psychopathy to roil the
world in a never-ending riot of
recrimination, meting out their vision
of vengeance with the blood-drenched
pitiless righteousness of godliness.
If the divine spirit of creation
does critically observe the
creatures inhabiting the zoo called
Earth, how then does that creator
weigh and balance responsibility
resulting from the inspiration to
imbue its creatures with passion?
The fraught, inexplicable transition
from polarizing extremes like
love and hatred whereby the most
cerebrally gifted of creation's
living experiments adapt life
to the non-existence of death
a finality expunging life, as
example. Had the creator imagined
that within its divine self only
would the ultimate authority
of life and death reside? But
then, the creator designed its
creatures to procreate, endowing
them with the capacity to bring
forth new life, and in so doing
enabling those blighted creatures
also to destroy lives the benighted
considered unworthy as though
it was they dabbling in the arcane
laboratory of existence, shuffling
stardust, carbon and atoms
about at whimsical dalliance.
A gibbous moon glints
off the landscape
as I leave a trail of
giant steps on the plump
luxury of a storm
following the tracks of mice
over the flats
then trailing a rabbit,
zig-zagging down the slope
where tree shadows
ghost the snow,
moon silvering the
silhouetted branches.
A hawthorn grasps my scarf
and my snowshoe is caught
by a stump playing
nighttime tricks.
Did that shadow move?
And did I hear nocturnal
hunting sounds?
My passage through these woods
is more dreamlike than real
and the fleeting shadows
may be no more than my
thoughts flitting the
forest of primal memory.
On our modified
Green Mountain
Bear Paws
we trek
this frozen streambed
this Ottawa Valley wood.
Although we forbear
as sensitive barbarians
to obtrude on
neighbours' groundspace
here
we tread seedlings
crack helpless frozen
branches
heedlessly
marvelling in mirage
of beauty
unseen by cerebral lens
of laden boll and bough.
For long past years
this ambiance
has hosted hostility
defenceless eyes
hidden
hatred of intrusion
through thickets
of familiarity.
Evidence of owl-
snatched hare
reveals itself
on pristine blanket
grouse tracks droppings
mice-tentative steps
shield from us
their tenants.
We stride on happy
oblivious harbingers
of unnamed animal dread.
Time
with its incurable habit
tricks on
leaving us stranded
on shoals of absent minded kindness
benevolent neglect
memory of ourselves
as new growth
tender and green
challenges the future.
Future that was
our binary code
when fusion
produced fission
and
we watched ourselves
split unrecognizable.
Still habit
is incurable
and still
we gather
over a mess of
scrambled eggs
coffee
history behind us
celebrating ennui
sometimes.
I watched your mind
expand to match
your gut. You saw
my cover shrivel
company to illusion.
But there is comfort
last night you said
you like me. We've
come a long way
I'm grateful
although I question
your taste.
So many times
we passed that place
knowing it was there
not really caring
... then
in young manhood
you draped your bones
on the pristine sheet
of the cagesided bed
and we hovered
in anguished disbelief
saw through a mist
a lifeline pierce
your transparent wrist
and
the steady drop
transfixed us
this was reality.
Gently the doctor probed
your beloved frame
our foggy memories
for family history
and we waited release
from the dreadful error.
Now every day
life sustaining injections
balance your present
consolidate your future. Now
every day we note
your altered need
vital dependence.
Daily we tread
a quicksand
in shades of fear and hope
reading you
like a barometer.
Waiting...
With the limitless patience of the faithful,
they wait, imperturbably confident and
assured, the seers and the shamans, the
yogis, the sufis and the swamis, near
Chichen Itza. Their followers worldwide
besotted with the spiritual chill of the
unknowable void of being will settle for
alternates. Awaiting the spirals of
heavenly light promised to invade the heads
of believers, from their vast galactic journey,
they weep in fear and joy. A cosmic dawn
arrives to gift the worthy with telepathy and
they will loose themselves from the
niggardly magnetic bonds of Earth, to
levitate and flee its constricting confines
set to implode. Electrical vortexes
arrived from the galaxy's centre bid them
hither and they will respond, leaving fear,
embracing love, bathed in the light of
transformative cleansing of the soul. For
they have discovered true salvation, fleeing
the stagnating brutal influence of life as
we think we know it. That is the revelation,
the cataclysmic upheaval that engages
humanity, one with the golden light
of divine forgiveness, an arcane alchemy
of life bypassing death, the final frontier
to incandescent longevity. If not immortality
then why not? Thirteen and counting.
Look...at us, at them, the pathetic ones -
quivering with the misery of unrequited life.
There was a little girl and she had quite
the curious curl in the middle of her cupid's
bow lip. That was due her take on life, her
belief her demands be met without a
single moment's hesitation. Lest her vivid
scorn and mighty umbrage be unleashed
upon the unwary so they would rue the
very day they challenged her divine right.
She could screech such decibels of rage
that the air around her shattered
leaving listeners with half-broken eardrums.
Her mighty fists would flail and bruise
hitting soft flesh targets, causing victims to
completely loose their equanimity. Her outrage
and nasty rants gave headaches without
cessation as her rancour and demands
melted resolve and victims simply
surrendered to finally achieve peace.
Her desperate mother found a job
looked about for paid child help, and
became a cause celebre for a nanny-rescue
line. That discussed options for frantic
mothers but little relief until one granny
said "I'll take the darling child, no mind
and trash the insubordinate hubris out of
her hide! Bring her over and take yourself
off to saving opportunities that beckon."
I raised you, a miserable misbegotten
child who felt my role on Earth was solely to
do your brutish bidding. I whomped sensibility
into your stubborn head, and I'm prepared to
do likewise with your child. Saving the world
from yet another surrender to the horrors
of an egocentric, entitled drama queen.
Once someone's proud and hopeful
domicile, it sits now ramshackle, forlorn
and alone on a remote, rural and heavily
forested stretch of highway. Little
traffic goes by that way, though once
before the installation of the major
new highway, it hosted its share of the
nation's travellers seeking respite in the
calm and peace of natural surroundings.
Imagination roams within the realm
of possibilities, and popular sentiment
casts a setting of newly-cleared acreage
with some doughty Jack turning his hand
to hewn timbers wrested from the adjacent
forest. The result: a tight and tidy rustic
home proudly sufficient unto itself. With
a well, out of which one drew crystalline
sparkling, pure and potable water.
There, beside that long-ago home was
the kitchen garden with its herbs and rows
of seasonal vegetables, some to be eaten
fresh, much more to be 'put up' in the
cool dark of the root cellar, to be called
upon to sustain the family in the snowy
depths of hard, long winters of need.
It sits there still, that charmer of a home.
Its builder would still recognize his
outstanding albeit amateur craftsmanship.
He had good reason to burst with pride.
Though viewing it now, he would surely
be overcome with regret and sadness.
It sags from the weight of its unkempt
abandoned reality, yet still stoutly
standing, door slanting ajar, held fast
by its topmost hinge. Roof overcome with
age and the raw presence of nature, green
with moss and algae. Windows, once boarded,
now patched with plywood shards.
Like a sadly forgotten elderly pirate
leaning on his knobby wooden pegleg
squinting out of his sole, unpatched eye.
Suddenly, the old man, abandoned to
his sad fate, recalls his heydays of high
seas adventure and a pacific smile
transforms his visage, we imagine.
So too is it with the dilapidated house
no longer a treasured home. For in its
garden, fronting the lot long reclaimed by
wild nature, glimpses of its former status
twinkle in glorious shades of pink, purple,
red and yellow, as peonies, lupins, roses
and irises boldly, insouciantly, bloom
among rank weeds, proclaiming their
pride: "Look, we're here, still!"
Nesting phase concluded, the hawks and
the owls have moved along. Leaving to us
the cardinals, robins and goldfinches to flit
through the trees, singing their territorial
tunes and their glorious songs of life's
adventures. Gone the nuthatches and
chickadees, the blue jays and the song
sparrows, but just for the nonce; they are
destined to return to join woodpeckers
busily exploiting the forest's resources.
Large, black squawking crow juveniles
still imploring sustenance from their harried
parents and silent chipmunks enliven the
environment as they slip through the canopy
and the dense-brackened understory.
Scolding red squirrels roast our ears as
we obligingly leave the day's offerings. In
our wake, suddenly appear hordes of
peanut-addicted grey, reds and blacks.
Gone now, the ripe red strawberries and
bright orange hawkweed. In their place juicy-
red raspberries and just-blooming pink thimble-
berry. Cowvetch runs amok over ferns and
hazelnut shrubs, between cinquefoil and
daisies, fleabane and buttercups; a riot of
colour. Giant pines spread out in the forest
their green limbs a sheltering structure.
Sharing the landscape of this forest arras,
elm, maple, fir, spruce, ironwood, poplar
cedar and ash. Many agonized by the sharp
thrusts of a Pileated woodpecker's search
bleeding sap. The trees creak and sway
grate trunks under the prevailing winds that
gust through this place, accompanying sudden
cloudbursts swelling the lazy creek to roar.
Gone now the days when grouse and partridge,
fox and raccoons, the occasional porcupine
and skunk might appear during our woodland
rambles. In the winter months when snow is
banked high and the ground is solidly frozen
coyotes appear at dusk and at dawn, and deer
are sometimes seen, venturing beyond their
usual places of refuge. These are rare occasions
when deer move closer to human habitation.
On these hot and humid summer days, we
see hares silently appear on the trails, and just
as silently depart. We delight in each new
sighting of bold chipmunks, downy woodpeckers,
chattering squirrels and chickadees awaiting
homage. Or the appearance of a colourful
fungus, a brown-speckled toad out of its element.
Red-winged blackbirds, constant revelations of
life; endless, welcoming, mysterious cycle.
They are immense, peculiar in their
presence, standing in ordered rows, planted
upon the verdant arras. Still, like ancient
massive, stone-dolmens, though their wide,
scepter-shaped blades are meant to
steadily, efficiently, reliably revolve, those
powerful images on the rural landscape.
The sky, blue and hushed, widespread
with white billowing wisps, is in no mood
to co-operate. Aeolus stubbornly holds
back his motion-beckoning breath. Until
finally an urgent exhalation nudges the
blades to stir themselves. Slowly, gracefully,
they obey the imperative that placed them
there on acreage after rural acreage.
Until finally, the army of wind-blades is
inexorably propelled, shifted from useless
indolence to the prospect of a standing army
of purposeful, revolving-determined action
energetically flailing the atmosphere, taming
the wild wind of exploitative usefulness.
Moving out, moving on; people do that
in this modern world so regularly, much
unlike earlier societies where townsfolk
and village people, farmers and settlers
stayed where they were born, incurious
about the world beyond their doorsteps
content to surrender to the comforts of
familiarity, proximity, predictability.
How things have changed, as we have
become experimental and opportunity-
migrants, thinking nothing of leaving
geographic roots, venturing beyond
the familiar toward adventure and life's
disclosure of open secrets, scarcely imagined
whose values we embrace as our lives
become complicated with new aspirations
old contents and contacts casually left
behind, with no regrets, none whatsoever.
These are the enterprising, confident
migrants, become thus as a personal
imperative, to set out and away, rather
than cling to heritage, culture, and familial
verities. They will succeed at whatever they
try their hands at, minds to, absorbing
other values, verities and social contracts.
Then there are the hordes of human dross
made so by being thrust asunder from a
place held dear, their lives ransomed for
escape from tyrants, oppression, starvation
and predatory-deadly tribal-incendiary
malice fully aforethought; pillage, massacres.
They represent the sad underbelly of forced
migration, living in sordid camps short of
food, water, medical attention, and hope.
This is the tragedy of the human spirit
left adrift on a sea of indifference because
the plight of countless numbers cannot be
consciously absorbed and rescue is tardily
delinquent to dire need. This is where
migration stalls in its tracks, where the
effluvium of humanity languish sadly
unsettled, set aside, a living nuisance.
There are so many people who go through
life deliberately unengaged with others'
concerns even when those concerns happen
to impact the entire society. Deliberately or
through sheer disaffection, effectively
disinvesting themselves from mutual concerns
to which others hasten to respond while they
the utterly self-invested simply remain
insensibly unaware, free to remain so.
Whether concerning neighbourhood
improvement, social ills; man- or nature
-inspired, ameliorating activities are always
someone else's concern, most certainly not
theirs. For they mount themselves above the
common fray. Knock at such doors collecting
charitable funds for an obvious social cause
of undoubted repute and their cold dismissal
places you and all other such common pests
in a well-earned place; social dungeon.
These are the entitled who will not cancel
personal planned events of social delectation
in the face of cataclysmal potential. A dread virus
surfacing to threaten the global community?
No matter. The exotic locale of an upscale
accommodation, tailored for the moneyed
set and pretenders beckons and they will
not miss their flight, nor pampered getaway.
Even as humanitarian groups work
feverishly to rescue, house, feed and medicate
counselling the indigenous afflicted beset by
misfortune resulting from a major hurricane
tsunami, earthquake or massively destructive
oceanic oil spill, the entitled bask in their
exclusive hotels, eating their gourmet meals
sunning on beaches where volunteers clean
wildfowl ordure and remove unsightly oil washing
ashore to destroy the pristine surface of fine
white sand, the sublime turquoise waters of
Paradise, horrendously defaced.
This is all so dreadfully inconvenient, too
drearily disturbing of one's anticipated
enjoyment. The tedious presence of those
do-gooders runs disturbingly counter-
productive to the exclusive elegance of
paid tourist presence. Simply intolerable.
Something should really be done about that.
Great good humour, a wonderfully
good nature and relaxed sense of
well-being, inclusive of my presence.
A robust, sometimes wry, always clever
and succinct ability to sum up a situation
and see a problem through to an immediate
and appropriate conclusion. An unfailing
reason and presence of mind, capable
of deep interest and understanding
overwhelming me by the width and
breadth of his boundless curiosity.
A completely open and reasonable
mind, alert to nuances and perspectives.
That incurable curiosity about what
lies beyond his previous experience and
knowledge base, leading him to propel
toward acquiring a well-grounded
understanding to accomplish whatever
tasks he sets for himself, out of sheer
determination and willingness to acquire
the required ease with the tools required.
His character and sense of responsibility
leading so frequently to a considered analysis
a workable conclusion. His engaging empathy
extended toward and beyond the familiar.
His unwillingness to harm even noxious
nuisance things that live and thrive, invade
and irritate. These creatures will be rescued and
retrieved to live another day, why not?
His intemperate joy in life and its
complexities. His keen, sometimes puckish
more often mordant, razor-sharp wit
geared to amuse and yet balance carefully
what lies beyond the sanguine obvious.
His courage in helping me to face any shared
life difficulties. His unflagging regard for the
well-being of intimate others, me primarily!
His encouragement, his reversions
to the enthusiasms of youth, drawing
his adoring partner to repeat the pleasures
of, say, dancing to the music of younger
years, all those too-many-to-count years
ago when we truly were young, the age
our grandchild has now attained, oh my!
And so much more.... The smile that
lingers on his familiar face as he regards
me. The comfort of his touch as flesh
meets its partner. The love and trust
respect and joy that exudes from each
of us. Inexorably, toward the other. Ah
I regret to say, the position is no longer
open; it has been admirably filled. I
commend you for your interest and urge
you to try elsewhere; it will not be regretted.
Finally, the storm that had roiled
and railed throughout night's
passage into the dim light of dawn
begins to wear out its incendiary
bellowing passion. The half-drowned
world below the weeping cauldron of the
sky lifts its sodden head in relief.
Dripping ceaselessly from the night's
assault, the relentless drumming
of the dark sky, as black clouds defied
one the other's domination, like the
clash of ferocious Titans, the world
shook itself and soon the dense
cloak of fog slunk away, leaving a
shimmering veil of mist to accede to
the strengthening sun's imperious
command to summarily depart.
Rivers of rainwater, storm water
the life-blood of that celestial combat
tumbled down mountain slopes
gathering momentum and thundering
and tossing, hauling all unsecured in
their wake, trees and shrubs and
rocks and soil all submitting to the
fury and the majesty of Nature's
imperious anomalous tantrums.
The tumbling mountain streams
icy, swollen beyond their narrow fluted
confines, hurtle through and over, beyond
and between time-and-water-scarred
stony-ridged passages, on the remote
impervious mountain slopes. Boulder-
strewn and tree-stumped, the excited
wide and running, tumbling rivers
thrash over all in their riotous passage.
Great steaming, boiling cauldrons of
water rushing to the great beyond of the
world's vast seas and waterways, stream
and steam, carrying in their irresistible
grip the unresistant detritus of forested
slopes, thundering the atmosphere
flailing all in their path, enjoining Nature's
chaos as she wills it, when she does.
Was a time we virtually sprinted up
that mountain trail. Mountain? Hey, more
like a carbuncle of a geological feature on
the New Hampshire landscape of granite
mountains, national and state forests and
fresh water lakes in grand natural abundance.
We were once handily capable of matching
our children's casually energetic strides of
youthful exuberance and adventure.
This has become for us, these forays into
the mountain landscape, a fond tradition.
Forty years on, we are now a simple brace
still parents, but of children now older than
we were back then. In place of our children
two elderly little companion dogs, as resolute
as we, eager to expend what energy we can
muster, to match the enthusiasm for
adventuring we cannot and need not contain.
They, like us, youth long behind, but freshness
in vision and aptitude for ongoing trysts with
nature's life-enhancing opportunities, forge on
delirious with the exhilaration of it all, the
fragrance of the woods, the freedom of movement
the evanescent birdsong, the teasing presence
of wildflowers; above all, the challenge.
As we initiate the ascent, the syncopated
rhythm of a pileated woodpecker sharply
drums the air. The series of fierce cloudbursts
that marched through yesterday has left
the trail darkly drenched, gravel crunching
underfoot at the trailhead. Our little dogs
are intrigued by odours released by the
rain and are loathe to be hurried along.
The initial ascent is marginally steep, the
trail far too well-maintained; on the verge of
irritating. The natural slope would be far
more welcome than the current advent of
rock-and-log-conceived "steps". Once the
notional steps are left behind, and a
network of tree roots and packed dirt-and-grit
trail remains, progress improves substantially.
Venerable pines, maples and oak whose
measured girth has been elaborated by
ancient layers of lichen lend an otherworldly
air of primeval fantasy to the landscape. An
oven bird's prolonged, repetitive call punctuates
the forest stillness. Along the trail, acorns litter
the ground; swift, tiny chipmunks make their
stealth forays, fleet as shadows to claim bounty.
Huge boulders appear beside the trail,
well lichened and mossed. Underfoot, smooth
granite outcroppings replace the trail from
time to time. Above the leafy canopy, some
blue sky winks back, interrupted by voluminous
billowing clouds, some so black, they throw
a darkly secretive ambiance on the arras.
Dragonflies, large and dark, flit by, intent
on their incessant hunt. The understory of
hemlock and moose maple, along with fern
and tree seedlings march in green insouciance
upon the lower landscape. And among them
lilies-of-the-valley hugging the bases of
tree trunks; the delicate tiny white bells
already on the fade end of bloom. Solomon's
seal are present, and blueberry shrubs, along
with the flower-white of blackberries.
Obtaining the height, a sprinkling of rain
as dark clouds hesitate despite the incessant
determined wind. The views are modestly
splendid...of the lake below and of the vast
sky, scattered with wide stretches of cloud.
An effort, a reasonable and pleasurable one
has brought us supreme satisfaction and
no little amount of maturity-validation.
Suddenly, normalcy violently assaulted.
We, once more, catapulted into an
unfamiliar world of physical dissonance.
Together companionably in our house
when with no warning a monumental
sound and furious motion delivered us
to a place we had scant reckoning with.
That force assembled its resources to
utterly surround us with its long, loud
wall of shrieking sound and tottering
frailty against a trusted reality pantomiming
a deadly opponent. Our stark shock and
slow recognition betrayed complacent ease.
In a world where nature can assume
its threatening persona geared to respond
with cataclysmic force, like a powerful
presence suddenly awakened to a
morose and malicious mood. We’ve
faced these moods before; one might
surmise once exposed to such power and
danger sanguine attitude would be
forever buried in expectation, but no.
Taken by shock and surprise, we cannot
fathom what is occurring until the
fierce tremblor threatens to bring down
walls around us. We exit, and wait, lurk
as the motion and groans of the earth
are translated to the exterior; in the
atmosphere of motion and commotion,
deep creaks subside and stillness reigns.
Left with a foreboding and deep unease
at this brutal demonstration that we are not
and never will be, masters in our own house
we move trembling, awe-struck limbs and
furrowed brows back into our house.
To restore order where chaos so briefly had
charge, and pictures hang on crooked walls.
All the wall paintings, ajar. Fragile items
tipped, overturned, contents languidly
insensate, spilled. Our telecommunications
suddenly out of order, minds slowly reverting
to the ordinary comforts of an ordinary
summer day. The radio soon crackles with
the over-heated excitement of recent panic
stilled, and people begin to recount their
disbelieving reactions to our Earth’s
flirtation with geological intemperance.
This not the benign nature that so
assiduously tends my garden, sweetly
offering gentle rains and abundant sun
kindly soil conditions and minuscule
creatures within to nurture and bring to
brilliant maturity the trees and shrubs so
fruitful that delight our green experience.
That nature that sends us colourful
songbirds to nest in our garden trees
and hosts of insects, butterflies and
small, furry creatures to swell the
natural presence of all her subjects
impressing us with her goodness of
purpose and integrity to her design.
This is another presence entirely, one
we cannot help but be aware of, yet as
remote and rare, not to be thought overmuch
of, a fearful, powerful and utterly destructive
presence, threatening to rescind her gracious
demeanor in favour of her domineering persona
devoid of purpose but to terrify her creatures
with the bleak certainty of her dread presence.
We hear the symptoms of her dreadful wrath
the thunderous groan of the Earth as it convulses,
contracts and shudders under her impervious
imperious direction. We feel the constancy of our
naive belief in our place challenged, as what was
solid and unmoving, writhes in an agony of violent
creep, collapsing and separating and shredding.
We see the darkly menacing vortex of the
hot breath she blows into a funnel cloud
voraciously sucking everything in its path
into chaotic re-distribution, reversing order
what was assembled as a whole reduced to
its pathetic constituent parts, strewn brokenly
on a suddenly-sere landscape of despair.
These fearsome events leave us trembling
and trepidatious. Our clever technologies
laid bare to malfunction and disarray. Torrential
rains wash away landmarks and drown the
puny signatures of humankind's presence
leaving doleful regret and the misery of loss
in their wake. Nature effortlessly removes
and destroys what she has given. We begin
to understand our temporary ownership.
As placid nature, her violent outbursts spent,
reverses the geological and atmospheric
surroundings to reflect the soothing familiar
hope, then the conceit of vanity, then scorn
and entitled empowerment settle back into
place as we assume again the settled ownership
and determined control of our earthly domain.
There are vestiges of the small treasures
past their prime, already bloomed, the
flower heads dried, foliage yet maturing, still
proud, but devoid of the evanescent bloom.
There are in evidence others with similar
foliage to those whose presence we hunt
but they are unremarkable lilies, their broad
spear-shaped leaves deep green and promising
the flowers wan and unprepossessing.
Mountain sorrel is in bloom, and so too
blackberries, with their sharp, white, starry
flowers. Patches of yellow hawkweed and
buttercups sit alongside the deep forest trail
close to lushly swirling ostrich ferns.
Dogwood begin to form their floral panicles
and a meadow's-worth of bunchberry
their cheery white faces in peer-review
bloom follow our curious presence.
Then here, and there, sometimes shy
sometimes bold, in grand isolation and
group sequestration, behind and beneath
ferns and hemlock branches, pale pink
white and robustly blushing, they display
themselves, the grand dames of the moist
forest floor, those Ladies Slipper orchids
with their ballooned, nodding heads held
proudly above the rich humus of the forest
soil, and the spray of the mountain stream.
The rain barely shifted on the
horizon, mist rises from mountain
slopes, dark clouds hang suspended
determinedly lodged on the mountain
peaks, comfortable there, resistant
to the dim edge of the sun, anxious to
burn away dark vapour dimming the
day's early summer aspirations.
Hemlock, pine, spruce and fir
present in staid stately array, hung
with mosses and lichens that cling
too to the grey, red, black granite
walls of the gorge down which the
mountain stream storms over the
great boulders the mountain slopes
have shed since time lost its memory.
The robust understory of moose
maple, dogwood and ferns march
in orderly procession up the slopes
under the canopy of a growing
presence of beech and yellow birch.
Old, crumbly and opportunity-rich
trunks gently decaying, do double
duty as nursing logs, with spruce
and hemlock seedlings clinging fast
to their humus-rich surfaces. When
the seedlings become mature enough
to fend for themselves, their nurses
become part of the organic whole.
The air is perfumed with the fragrance
of seasonal blooms, wafted by gentle
breezes. The repeated peal of a
Pileated woodpecker rends the air.
Thrushes sing their welcome of
still-impending rain. Yellow Admirals
flit from ground to graceful, looping
heights, disappearing into the witches'
brew of bright-green tangled leafage.
