Naming It

How time flies, how strange
that a diseased ideology can influence
so many verging on psychopathy that
becoming a vehicle to deliver mass
death on unsuspecting innocents be
interpreted as a critical touchstone
a pathway to eternal glory and an
honoured presence as a celebrated
martyr, particularly favoured by God.
Where once-intrepid tourists eager
to witness the wonders of the world
acquainting themselves with exotic
cultures from heritage sites around
the world concerned themselves
primarily with hopes for clement
weather conditions while their
governments issued alerts on the
incidence of minor crime, warning of
pickpockets, of undrinkable water,
unsanitary conditions, or the prevalence
of insect-borne diseases. Now the alerts
dwell on the potential for vulnerability
to terrorism, now media globally
feature horrendous real-time videos, 
images of scores dead on the streets,
wounded crowding hospitals and
the macabre celebrations of Islamists
warbling their delight over conquest.


 

Flirting With Nature

Flirting with sound and fury
has its inherently exciting moments
and its undeniable dangers. Sometimes
we gamble and sometimes we win.
A loss is more frequent, when we
hazard a summertime hike in the
woods and extreme weather conditions
of nature's making produce fierce
thunderheads then we view the 
rage of the heavens in combat with
weapons of thundering mallets
and powerful electric swords leading
to an inundation of pure misery.
Others have been less fortunate
when lightning strikes, or massive
wind gusts create toppling trees
creating threats of tree-deaths. We
tempt fate as vulnerable creatures
trusting that a day's oblivious commune
with nature will elevate our moods
through the exposure we crave in
the serenity of her benevolence.

 

Living Art

One might name them gardens
in miniature, thriving with life and
energy, fragrant and heart-stopping
in their form, texture and vibrant colour
those floral shapes of surpassing
beauty. They are glorious works
of living art, pleasing beyond belief
at their jolting vision of a tiny
landscape, a portable Eden
confronting our challenged
sensibilities in a busy world of
distractions and concerns. Their
serene and lovely presence lends
sublime elegance to any setting
far outdistancing the pedestrian
orderly regimented gardens of
tidy beds and boring borders. These
urns containing their very own gardens
reflecting classical antiquity's lore
of ornamenting nature's divinely
enchanting flora have travelled
through the ages, surviving and
flaunting their irreplaceable role to
lovers of nature and living treasures.


 

The Rioting Garden

There is a riot ongoing right
outside my door. My eye is arrested
and there I stand, defenses absent,
a prisoner of the garden, where a
riot of form and colour, competing
shades and shapes contrasting and
appealing wage their battle for
territory and assumed entitlements
to grandstand and purloin from
neighbours their hard-fought
recognition as blooming champions
in a never-ceasing struggle to 
obtain and maintain vaunted status
as the epitome of garden grace,
perhaps overlooking that the
timeless foundation of a well-ordered
garden is the graciousness permitting
rivals in beauty and presence their
opportunity to share centre-stage.
But no, their stubborn pique against
fair acceptance calls me, the
caretaker of the garden, to arm
myself with spade and secateurs
to enter the fray, chastising and
committing the miscreants to order.


 

The Agony of the Garden

The existential stress inflicted on
all living things in extremes of weather
reflects the misery of the parched garden
under the fierce summer sun, sizzling
delicate blooms, shrinking foliage
as the exalted beauty of summer
flowers withdraw in sheer misery in
an uncommon heat wave. The heat is
a cloying tempest of high humidity
and searing wind; the excess of an
afternoon exposure of extremes. The
agony of the garden is suddenly
broken with an approaching series
of heavenly blasts enclosing the sun
behind shutters of purple cloud
as the sky is rent by thunderheads
sending their electrical calling cards.
Soon the garden has been doubly
battered, prostrate from the debilitating
breath of the sun followed by a
previously desiccating wind that
now hurls watery blasts of rainfall,
a copious drenching washing away the
torrid heat in bursts of assaulting
rain, piercing and tearing the elegant
garden, ragged and dishevelled, yet
defiant in its intent to husband the sun
and rain to its defence and repair.

 

Looting The Woods

Would anyone give a mind to
protest, if they knew of my intent 
to select native specimens from the
forest floor to transplant in my garden?
Like a stealthy thief I prepare my
illicit tools. Site survey in all seasons
long since undertaken, I have become
a skilled looter. My bag of gainful
enterprise simple enough: gloves,
spade and receptacles of just-right 
size to enclose my treasures within 
for easy transport. My garden, beloved
and nurtured, holds trilliums, foamflower,
trout lilies and magnificent, giant
Jack-in-the-pulpits well adapted
now to their cultivated home, those
pilfered native plants. As from today's
outing in the woods and my swift
stoop-and-acquire efforts in the sweet
shade of the forest canopy, wild ginger 
too, has joined my thriving garden.

Garden Pride

One sits, surely on the slope
of a precipice when pleasurable
gratification escapes the bounds 
of reason to become unearned pride
a hairsbreadth from hubris when
one takes full and unattributed
credit for what nature herself has
designed and nurtured, to look
upon it dreamily as a scintillating
mirage, not reality, revelling in its
ephemeral, glowing beauty
to conclude that I, not nature,
gave the garden life. In assuming and
claiming too much I surely risk
attracting the penance of regret
following ruin, for nature, not I,
commands the elements that
can conspire to make me rue 
my impulsive, compulsive pride.