His Intellect

Let's face it, there is a vast gulf between
your strictly surface, facile kind of intelligence
and his far more deeply-rooted cerebral
function, amply evidenced by his lengthy,
thoughtful responses to your casual enquiries,
looking for a surface-skimming response
lacking depth, barely sufficing to
produce a depth of understanding.

For you, the need is to appear erudite,
a veneer of languid knowingness. Details
are irrelevant; the facade, the impression
gained becomes the goal, to impress
others with the quality of your mind
which in fact has no depth, no breadth,
an empty mirage, one seldom challenged
leaving reputation undeserved, intact.

For him, the challenge clearly is to
learn, explore, probe and attain a measure
of knowledge; a compulsive, inner-directed
personal imperative. The incorrigible
desire to know; no impulse, but a satisfying
urge adding value to a life of enquiry.
His scientifically questing mind forever
searching to expand the boundaries.

His elastic, curious, absorptive mind.
Your disdain of the care he takes to ensure
you fully understand the impact of his
responses, their measured detail, his
patient and informed explanations
speak volumes of your mental limitations
in the company of one who has none.

Who Are We To Presume?

The celestial clockwork of the Universe
moves to its natural, profound imperatives,
awing distant observers with the merest
hint perceived of the magisterial power
of its connecting, interwoven elements.

Hydrogen-fuelled sun flares disrupt
Earth's puny electrical systems, its satellites'
performance. The moon's phases impact
our tidal bores. We are second-upon-second
bombarded by atmospheric radiation.

Rare but deadly collisions between meteors
and our planet create immense concussions,
deep craters in Earth's crust, atmospheric
occlusion, revolving ice-age deep freezes and
widespread creature-and-flora extermination.

Our great experimental astro-physicists,
their hypotheses and formulas instructing
the science of comprehending Nature
and the Universe merely begin the ongoing
process that haughtily defies interpretation.

The night sky reveals the height and the
depth of the nearest Constellations in
our limited yet unfathomable Galaxy, a mote
in the uncountable numbers of same that
speckle space, that vast dark unknowable
of the limitless, timeless Universe.

My Grateful, Staunch Admirers

There are few who can boast, as I can,
of having an ardently appreciative audience,
a large base of those for whom my daily
appearance is profoundly important, those
whose undivided loyalty to me is palpable
and robustly evident, followers whose
preoccupation with my presence and the
essence of my being - and being there - is
of the most profound, extreme importance.

Note: I do not boast, though I could, for
I am simply stating the reality and my grave
responsibility to those for whom my presence
inspires adulation. I should also hasten to note
for the record that my admirers are no motley
crew; they represent not an undiscerning public
of celebrity-agog, quasi aristocrats, performing
'artists' and sport figures. They are rather,
austere-minded benevolent autocrats in their
own right, recognizing in me a special benefactor
whose pure altruism is beyond reproach.

These, my loyal followers, do not represent
as awkward, garishly-clad social misfits.
They pay mind to sartorial choices, eschewing
rude integuments for the classic appearance
of suited and furred elegance. They pay daily
homage to the wisdom of my years and my
generosity of spirit, sharing with them my
August presence as they gather to worship at
my feet, making haste lest they arrive tardily.

None of my followers fail to partake
of my offerings, declaring from surrounding
treetops their passionate approval of my
fleeting presence, my gifts to them, one and
all. Nature's aristocrats, they take flight,
they drive themselves to my quotidian
stroll amongst them, they politely lining the
woodland trails as I pass, doling peanuts.

Robins' Alarum

From a distance the repeated shrill
musical note impinges the atmosphere.
A song unfinished but obviously emitted
familiarly from a robin's throat. Might
it be, as is so often done, inviting rain
to release us all, albeit temporarily,
from this cloistered, cloying heatwave?

The distance is breached as we move
steadily forward on the forest trail,
our boots crushing fallen pine cones
sticky with sap. There is a detectable
note of shrill hysteria now in the
reiterated call and we strain our eyes
toward the canopy of leafy green.

Ah, there they are, a pair of gaudy
breasted robins indeed, and frantically
winging it from branch to branch in
some unseemly, un-robin display of
alarum. Become explicable, yet unusual,
when we raise eyes to a bare limb.

Where sits the large, dark, hunched
figure of an imperturbable barred owl,
who, sufficiently irritated, is not beyond
exercising its raptor's prerogative to
silence his fear-addled tormentors.

Wild Cultivating

Just as I am happily amenable
to share my garden treasures …
lilies and irises, heuchera and hostas …
with my neighbours, for their less
well-endowed gardens, so too was
the nearby forest generous with its
wildflowers, offering up to me
for my garden, trilliums and
foam flower, trout lilies and
good gracious! Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

They have made my garden prosper
in the spring, proliferating wildly,
profligate with their charming
offspring, and I now have a
veritable shaded meadow of
foam flower, shyer trilliums, but
multiple and GIANT Jacks. The
Jacks so robust they do not fade
into summer’s dog days, but
splendidly tall and proud, remain
steadfast summer garden sentinels.

Fingers of Dawn

The furtive fingers of dawn filter
through our open bedroom windows
to linger caressingly upon your sleeping
form, warm and comforting beside me.
You've thrown off the lightly draped
sheet, seeking stray coolness of any
wisp of fresh air that might ruffle
through on the moist, overheated
atmosphere of a late-summer night.

My gaze is drawn to your gently
illuminated face, cheekbones and
nose outlined in shadow and light. The
curve of your chest, rising in steady
respiration, the softly emphatic grace
of your arms, your shoulders, sturdy neck,
and hands crossed so casually over chest,
fingers curved in a suggestion of their
purposeful day-time manipulation of
hammer and saw, mower and spade.

The ambient light, mild gold and yet
gracious enough to withhold the
oppressive heat of the coming day,
sketches you in detailed strokes of
lively muscle and well-toned skin
though your beard is grey. Dawn's
waking light casts its glow, delineating
and illuminating the one who has lain
beside me for near to sixty years.

Does Anyone Care?

A riot police officer directs his colleagues to clear people away from a burning car in Clarence Road in Hackney. Photo: Getty Images

The hellfires of the dread Inferno
are not alight only in the Underworld,
from which bonfires of the vanities
of human desire, avarice and conceit
are cleansed in a conflagration of
these mortal sins, oh no indeed! One
thing has a tendency to lead to another;
assault and insult the populace, they
snarl, object, and the dry tinder fires up.

For there are communities the world over
where poverty of morals, human indignities
of bovine ignorance result in imbecilic citizens
boasting of "fun" to be had in mobbed
gatherings notified by brutish messages to
come along, join the gleeful mob in a frenzy
of looting, torching and any type of vile
and violent civil disobedience a truly
demented imagination can percolate.

Watch the civil authorities moan
in disbelieving dismay. Why, one might
think they haven't a clue that bored,
unemployed youth are apt to act out!
See the politicos wring their hands,
promising to solve and salve the
inequities and forgive all transgressions.

Look, police just standing by passively.
The hits they've taken have informed
them that witness to fire-bombing and
looting is acceptable, but riots ... definitely
not so. You there! Grab that flat-screen
set, those video games, the cellphones and
the track shoes, and just ... you know,
amble out - casually; no one cares.