The Flamboyant Garden

This is the garden that tantalizes

and teases, luring us each morning

to perambulate its pathways,

to turn and discover discreet

new surprises, softly awaiting

delighted discovery, dewy with

pearls from last night's downpour.

Glittering, those pearls, as priceless 

ornaments sifted over the crowning 

beauty of cascading flower-bedecked 

vines, clambering roses, fragrant lilac 

and emerald-green foliage, a bower

of brightness under shimmering sun.

A brilliant chorus consolidates

the sensational scene, cardinal

trilling atop the spire of the pine,

song sparrow singing its presence

within the dense-needled fastness

surrounded by the architecture of

nature's multitudinous bounty.

We wander, amazed with our senses 

reacting to fabulous revelations, the 

groomed and orderly yet riotously 

singular textures and shadings shamelessly 

boasting their peerless freshness in prideful

display.  This tempestuous, tenuous 

presence fragile with timeless patience.

 Livid History

How could you? appealed the

teen to her grandmother,

responding with swift dismay

to an anecdote of reminiscence;

two very young people who

intertwined their lives until

one decided they should part,

the other dissolved in grief

until on reconsideration their 

young union was renewed

and pursued into a long, shared

future.  Well, said the grandmother,

yes it was cruel and he suffered

but that was a long time ago.

The girl would have none of that,

snapping back her disbelief:

But that's my grandfather!

 Hidden Garden

Unknown and unseen by

passersby, our secret garden

is our private delight, leaping

into vision, surprising us

constantly with its display of

flamboyant blooms, fragrant

floral sprays and the fabulous

verdant architecture of vines,

trees of ornamental diversity,

leaves like spoons and spades,

lances and air-light feathers.

None but we privy to its

splendid array and glorious

colour, shapes and enchanting

discoveries of unexpected

appearances, shared by bees,

butterflies, dragonflies and

birds that shelter in the

dazzling performances it

daily mounts in the theatre

of its lively exuberance.

Our Garden

 The Drowning World

Drenched, near-drowned we are,

in Nature's bespittaled spite,

these dark gloomy, oppressive

days of unrelenting rainfall.  The

soil flails, cowers, objecting in

the weight of the deluge, refusing

to open its satiated maw as 

waterways course livid with

muck, churned by the opened

skies, incapable of restraining

the dark menace of burdened

clouds groaning and clashing,

releasing themselves from the

bondage that threatens to hurl

them to the landscape below as

they leak and bellow their agony,

dashing floods below, flushing

roots and whipping branches from

their living perches, all stifled and

strangled, gasping to dry, feel

sun, be rescued from the world

turned into a churning seabed.

The Canadian Rockies

Photographs courtesy of J.S. Rosenfeld

Following Orders

How very liberating

it must have been to calmly

state "nicht schuldig".

To serve a master like the

German Reich whose purpose

so neatly dovetailed with

their very own sentiments

and indeed direction 

toward a divine destiny.

How relieving and

honourable to say, placidly,

with such serene conviction

that they were, after all,

merely and sincerely

with all the passion

they could muster,

following orders.

Not for them, proudly

diligent in their duty,

to refuse to murder, bit

by needful bit, an entire

people.  For they represented

the dregs of humankind and

those that herded them into

death camps were, in reality,

the chosen, supreme.