You, Me, a Life
Tuning in to the golden era of the
50s Saturday nights, we melt at the
dreamily pensive Blue Moon
and September Song, as you
extend your arms to lift me
into the mesmerizing embrace
of the dance floor our kitchen
has become. The heat and sweet
fragrance of your body melts
into mine again, and we are
transformed into the children
we once were, enraptured with
one another, imagining a future
together, loving the close sensuality
of our swaying tandem, no one
on the crowded dance floor but us
as the gentle caress of our hands
nestling on shoulders and hips
awakened us to prospects
whose promise we could just
begin to imagine yet unable to
fully comprehend until a lifetime
later. The music has restored youth
and the promise, elevating us
to another realm of time reflecting
our endless love in a life well
shared between us, dearest soul.
The most powerfully luminously bright
objects dwelling within the immensity
of the Universe are caught in the lens of
human-devised eyes on the sky, great
telescopes like the Hubble that traverse
the heavens and bring back to us the
wonder of their ineffable imagines. We
observe what we may, with awe and
compelling fascination, striving to
understand our place in this arcane web
of design so skilfully fabricated by Nature.
The swirling chemicals and gases that
formed our organic presence and brought
us to life, maturing mind over matter
eludes us yet and always shall. Nature's
purpose appears itself divine as expression
and formula owing to the neutrality of
serendipity in the heavenly realm of
opportunity, confluence, happenstance.
As she rests in benign satisfaction with her
splendid theatrical performance, the
foundation of an energizing 'it', that wakens
itself, becomes itself where there was a dark
vacuum, then distributes itself to inhabit nothing
making something of nowhere, stimulating
and producing variety and synthesis, we became.
Becoming, we look upward to the vastness
of our progenitor the dark heavens,
pinprick-lit by countless bright orbs swirling
the universe in their numberless heavenly
bodies. Heat and light, energy and matter
conspire themselves into being and we must
know how, when and why, but cannot.
Small, cool red stars distinguish themselves
in the inexorably growing inventory, that
ineluctable recognition of plausible theory
welcoming the presence of what is deduced,
not witnessed. Dark matter chooses to retreat
its magnetic appeal of trillions of evolving,
revolving, gravity-bound-and-captured
expendables. What cannot be seen can be
hypothesized into brilliant, yet dim existence.
Nature exercises her formulaic invention
in forms and elements, conditions and
suppositions that tease her restless creative
impulses. Those endless experiments in
existence and alternates where what was
is extinguished, amuses and entertains a
sublime presence we cannot begin to imagine.
The Canine Sociopath
He looks nice enough, but he's a
terror of a terrier, with a growing
history of nasty repute causing small
dogs to shrink within themselves in
his menacingly sidling presence. Dogs
too harbour their preferences in amour
and why not? Uncivil barbarity has
few admirers in any species. The
capricious random selection mode
of some male dogs is not to the taste
of fastidious females of the species.
Seem familiar? The bumptious males
heedless of circumstances press
themselves narcisistically on those
least expecting their hot and heavy
aspirations. Take Rufus for example
unfussily heterosexual who prefers
small dogs reasoning perhaps they
can wreak less damage to his hide and
pride than larger ones his offensive
mounting incites to violence. Those
his own size won't do, and whether male
or female is irrelevant to his eagerness
to fulfill himself while the objects of
his desire sensing his intent do their
best to vacate his proximity. He's a
single-minded menace, prepared to
asphyxiate any unfortunate little mutt
whom he can accost, ravage and leave
for his next conquest. This canine
Lothario fancies himself popular for
his candid opportunism. In civil terms
of humanspeak the wretched beast
is an unregenerate would-be rapist.
The Urban Forest
This dense green space with its
overhanging forest canopy where
hawks whistle above as they coast on
prevailing winds represents an urban
woodland. It remains sheltered from
encroachment of urban construction
through the felicity of geology, for
it is a deeply ravined area, thick with
the presence of wildlife, coniferous
and deciduous trees, a corridor for
migrating birds seeking temporary
haven, and a network of rivulets
all guaranteeing its protected status. As
dense as is the forest in early morning
hours when cardinals, robins and
goldfinches raise their ecstatic voices
in praise of the dawning day, a dull
distant roar penetrates the serenity
of the forest, testament to a busy
highway encircling the city contiguous
to the forested ravine. The morning sun
glances stray rays through the canopy
to unerringly pick out the blistering
carmine berries of red baneberry and
the drooping sprays of wild cherries
amongst the varied shades in the
overwhelming monotone of green
needles and foliage, and the robust
bracken on the forest floor.
Noble Athens, 632 B.C.
A mass grave site uncovered by
archaeologists revealing the orderly
burial of fit young men at the height
of their masculine competitive-virile
development as a credit to civilization
in ancient Greece, whose philosophy
extolled the wisdom inherent in
the rational cerebral mind and
whose timeless art sculpted the
magnificent splendour of youth in
the human anatomy's physical
prowess, power and beauty. These
manacled skeletons were discovered
in the fabled city-state of Athens.
No fewer than eighty remnants of
once-vibrant young men held
prisoner, shackled and killed
en masse. Comfort to be taken in
the archaeological interpretation of
history by the supervisor of the
excavation site: "They have been
executed all in the same manner."
Adding however, the observation:
"But they have been buried with
respect." How humanely gratifying.
The Glorious Sunflower
They're large and brassy-bold
beloved by delicate goldfinches
those graceful songbirds who
identify their own golden symbolism
of the life-giving sun in the seeds
so generously scattered for the
tiny creatures to sustain existence.
Yet glorious as their presence is
decorating the garden, bullies
they indeed are in their inimitable
manner, growing apace to produce
a giant stalk whose presence
clearly takes precedence over the
timid claims of geraniums and daisies
with their flimsy foliage; charming
but no competition to the brash
coppery presence of the flower
accessorizing the sun, whose seed
birds in their squawking multitudes
will testify their very existence
depends upon, a raw popularity
contest that leaves lilies and
coneflowers in consternating
puzzlement as though their beauty
and function is not equally admirable.
Sunflowers have the advantage of
superb public relations -- their
magnificent size pace the glorious
disk of their sunny seeds ripening
in the sun turns heads, influences
flight patterns, illuminates the garden.
A Short Story of Loss
He belonged to a world rich with
heritage, legacy and loss. And fortune
turned him in its unerring direction
helpless to avoid its timeless brunt.
Orphaned by indigent parents taking
untimely leave he fled from his
village's benevolence planning to
install the boy in the poor house
which kept widows and other
orphans from starvation, to Warsaw
in desperate search of his brother
who in the end was treated by the
Third Reich to the liberty that slave
labour promised. Living on the heedless
streets his search unavailing, he was
selected along with other homeless
boys for passage to Canada. At age
fourteen he became an indentured
farm hand, as the other boys with
whom he laboured became family.
When full passage was paid through
their labour they were all free to find
their place in society. He yearned to
become educated, in search of wisdom.
A voracious reader of a strange new
language he expressed his anguish
by filling blank pages with words that
impressed him. Music appealed to
him and when he played in a modest
orchestra the gleaming bell of his tuba
hid his meager presence. Meeting
another refugee they married and he
fathered one, then two, three and
finally four. Heart disease found him.
He worked a factory steam press
dehydrating his wizened form but
it paid their modest bills. Uncertain
of his age, he was certain he had no
intention of dying when cancer called.
He wrote studiously in a neat, small
hand of his life, its travails, his hopes
and his fears. And his struggle for
justice in the world. A diary became
a memoir, a veritable tome of his
philosophical conclusions. He told
whomever he could he did not want
to die, but god was not listening.
Perhaps that was because his god
rested within the pages of a book,
any book, and sacred text was any
page of any book that held words and
ideas and he yearned for his own words
to be published, to be read and seen
as wise. At his death his son took
possession of his father's precious
manuscript for safe-keeping. So well
concealed that when the son died
the papers were never found. So, is
this a life-story in brief, or is it
a briefly-imagined life? Who knows...
