Happenstance

There are in anyone's life
opportunities to discover 
the best in others. Friends
can last a lifetime and
alternately a lifetime can
be spent absent friends
while transitory friends
can reveal themselves briefly
but meaningfully and
movingly within an
introduction before parting
which may consume a tiny
portion of a day. Met and
soon to be parted, but
remembered during the
brief exposure of a trip
to a place far removed from
one's ordinary life. A
fortuitous meeting that
becomes part of the lore and
legend of life's experience.

Animal Kinship

There is community in
mutually instant friendship
among those whose spirit is
attuned to kinship with animal
companions that engage us
and advance the quality of our
lives. The presence of a puppy
capable of exciting the attention
of those who otherwise have no
interest in casual exchanges.
Brief contacts of warmth and
the memory of regret and longing
incited by the presence of
unabashedly curious dogs
willing and eager to extend
their repertory and circle of
acquaintance. In such brief
but meaningful encounters
humanity discovers in itself
its capacity to care and to emote
the kindness of instinctual
harmony among companion
species. We exhibit and share
the capacity to appreciate and
celebrate our shared existence
and in the process affirm the
benefaction of better natures.

Rain, Rain

It's one of those tediously
dusk-dark days, courtesy of
petulant nature in one of her
sporadically bad tempers
moodily bleak, calling on
her elements to share her misery
in endless rain, a low ceiling
of bruised cloud hovering
stubbornly over our
drenched landscape. Too
sodden to enjoy the outside
we too stare sullenly out of
streaming windows, resentful
of the waste of an otherwise
perfectly good summer day.
Even our little dogs, pampered
by the expectation that this day
like the preceding ones will
be warm, bright and dry
the better to cavort around
the gardens, scamper and hide
when we bid them outside.
The garden, though thrives,
flowering vines speedily
sending their tendrils to coil
about supports, roses happy
enough to bloom exuberantly
iridescent pools of rain
gleaming on the foliage of
plantain lilies -- only the large
and luscious heads of peonies
splendid in colour and layered
form burdened by the weight
of the rain, hang forlornly
even while their divine fragrance
competes with the perfumed
essence of the lilacs and perkily 
cheeky lilies-of-the-valley.

The Teen Stifled

Hard to imagine that this woman
in her middle age term of life
was ever a lithe-limbed teen
observing the world and her 
future with a spark in her psyche.
That spark long since outlived
as she perambulates her awkward
gait from left to right, slowly
advancing her body ponderous
with the weight of the years. The
teen advanced time to become a
grossly proportioned parody of
her dreams. Finding escape from
the corporeal reality of excess
and stagnation of movement in
the freedom given her behind the
wheel of her SUV, a mechanically
nimble alternate in her self-imposed
bondage to stifling permanent
incapacity; surely the spirit of
the teen looks on with melancholy.

Endless Renewal

The foundation of the forest
reaching from the mountain's
widest earth bound base to its
narrowing slopes until it becomes
an alpine struggle for survival
against icy sleet and roaring
winds of winter is forever
damply penetrated. Mosses and
lichens thrive on tree trunks
like fussy ornaments. Gnarled
old yellow birch, bark unfurling
thick with lichen, long-tumbled
mountainside boulders hosting
mosses, lichens and tender new
saplings like miniature forests
mocking the original. The still,
rain-dripping forest below redolent
with nature's decay as climax heralds
finality even while endless time 
promises renewal, germination 
hastened by presiding humidity. 
In the fastness of the forest the
mock applause of an oven bird
resounds as time and creation
proceed on their endless destiny.

 

The Mountain Stream

The early morning sun yet
gathering full potency wanly
begins to light its way through
the damp cold atmosphere of
declining dawn, still stamped
with the signature of night and
the rain that distinguished it. A
robin trills its peerless praise
of sun following rain. Rocks
long tumbled, sliding the 
mountainside to rest among
great old pines, glisten their
presence, grey lichen in a
pattern rejecting the shine. The
mountain stream lashes the slope
to carve its journey in a permanent
map on the granite, reaching the
forest floor, sending its spray
high and truculently claiming
its presence in the din of its roar.

 

The Thriving Forest

The trail forges its way steadily
upward on the treed flank of
the mountain. A switchback 
takes a sharp jog across the
mountain stream, tumbled rockfalls
offering nimble footage. As the trail
winds on the ascent it offers its
path of earth-encrusted sand
and sharp gravel mocking time
dessicating rock, over a network
of interwoven tree roots where
generations of alpine hikers have
trodden. The trail swerves to
meet the stream again, then 
verges off once more, blackflies
rising like minuscule harpies
an endless source of threat from
the blueberry bushes wildly
making their presence on the
margins of the trail, alongside
mountain sorrel. A gentle rain
patters over the green canopy above.
The forest thrives in its elements.