The Aerial Acrobat

The great lid of the world
is marbled with delicate ivory
dull grey streaks of charcoal
gently bruised with hints of
purple, casting a cool haze
over the landscape below.

A pair of ducks lift from a
wetland, flapping furiously
against the still air while a
vulture, expertly coasting on
elusive updrafts lays claim
to the sky as its very own.

Luxuriating in its
extravagant loops, twists
and aerobic acrobatics,
a dark dihedral against
the mottled screen of the
overwhelmed sky.

The Dynamism of Hawks

Wind finally abated, all is still,
the woods complacent with its
new season, hawthorns not yet in life
but sumacs spouting, and Serviceberry
modest in pale white bloom.
Wildflowers have commenced their
shades of mauve, yellow, red and white.
Primitive horsetails, red baneberry
dapple the woods before the
leafed canopy fully emerges.

Last week's wild windstorm
that ravaged tall old, yet frail
firs suddenly a dim memory
recalled by the felled giants littering
the forest floor in a rebuke to the
spring rejoicing. The return of
gentleness under a sky alternating
blue with its gold warming disk;
frilled with white clouds shot
through with steaks of rain-grey.

Above the green-glazed canopy -
wild shrieks thread through dark
branches arresting the notice of
small, furred animals and size-vulnerable
birds. The dynamism of hawks swooping
the skies and the landscape below, alert
to possibilities as only raptors can be.

The Unleafed Forest

A fiercely black crow, haunting
the airspace, silently following
our daily amble through these
spring woods. Along the way,
squirrels, waiting patiently
for the deposit of endless
peanuts. Years of expectation
encourages some to directly
advance their distance.

Advanced, albeit slowly in this
cold, wet and windy spring, are
the flora finally greeting our eyes.
Bedding grasses, trout lilies now at
last nodding yellow flower-heads
much more delicately aesthetic
than the sun-loving, deprived
coltsfoot sitting forlornly beside
the bank of the ravine's creek.

We hazard guesses where
the white trilliums will bloom
their rare presence among the
common carmine species in the
clay-and-sand soil of the ravine.
Here and there the muted mauve
of tiny woodland violets.

Lush mosses have resumed
their glowing presence on old tree
trunks along with lichen and orange
ruffled shelf fungi, awakened to
new possibilities. Woodpeckers'
triumphant discoveries of palatable
new hunting-and-pecking pierce
through the yet-unleafed forest.

Forces Of Destruction

The exceptional nations of the world;
advanced technologies, knowledge-based
economies imbued with social conscience,
forge a self-protective alliance of
military strength propped by socially
progressive values. To them, human
rights entitlements and responsibilities
express their motivating stimulus.

Tasked with the mission to intercede
on a war front designated under the UN's
"responsibility to protect" moral doctrine
they advance air-propelled strength to
diminish the forces of destruction
launched by a tyranny to subdue and vanquish
their own during a peoples' uprising.

As the dictator's iron might rains down
deadly missiles and rockets on the civilian
army of peaceful protests, encircling and
isolating, sealing escape routes, shelling
homes and civil infrastructures, hospitals
and schools, the world watches and waits.

Awaiting an outcome much like reading
the closing gripping pages of a popular
action novel; like viewing the final stages
of an oft-resurrected play on humanity's
inability to censor itself, restrain its
most basest instincts; choosing any
dimension of action as long as it fails to
reflect that of a peaceful, talented muse.

Spring Rain

A delicate patter
of spring rain
amuses itself
tip-toeing lightly
through my garden
spurring green shoots
and buds, spring bulbs
and unfurling ferns
to poke themselves
bashfully into
renewed presence.
A pale green blush
has captured the
garden trees
suddenly spurting life.

Attack : Counterattack

Newspapers announcing the death of accused 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden are seen at a newsstand outside the World Trade Center site May 2, 2011 in New York City. Getty Images

That which is inevitable is fated
to occur, beyond the efforts of one
man to avert the certain destiny
he has himself with great deliberation
created the impetus for; the slowly
grinding wheel of his misfortune
will eventually and fatally occur.

There is no reason to doubt
the veracity of what the ancients
warned: "Live by the sword, die by the
sword." Those who do evil often enough
escape the toll if the result of what
they do is malevolently
discreet in its affect.

Those who visualize and promote
grandly theatrical displays of their
brutal contempt to ensure that
unspeakable terror grips the minds
of victims bring the unmitigated
effect of venomous vengeance down
upon their unwary heads.

For those fiercely cleaving to the
concept of blessed martyrdom achieved
through celebrated and hideous acts
of bloody destruction, it must hardly
concern them that the end is at hand
for they have achieved their purpose.

Yet in a conflict that pits the defenders
of one religion against another, one
who considers himself an atavar of
Saladin claiming his role to lead jihad
against the Crusaders and Jews places
martyrdom in abeyance and thereafter
in forfeiture when dispatched by infidels.

No Glory Here

Wars are dread scourges
that humankind never fails
over time and space to visit
and re-visit upon itself,
stupidly failing to heed
its own advice to look to
history, parse and gain.

Yes, there is such a rarity as a
"just" war; remotely rare, where
the violated lives demand
intervention and here, too,
humanity fails to intercede for
just reasons, citing instead a myriad
of provocations originating
in crass imperatives.