Time and Patience

If life's experience smiles kindly
upon you, those times when you feel
discouraged, apprehensive of the future
fearful of the present and in need of
a friendly smile from someone
genuinely engaged in you as an
individual, feel free to dispense with
the civility you feel owing in excess
meeting by happenstance with the
ultimate overbearing bore whom
only his faithful dog could love
without reservation. When your
face betrays your emotions and
the fellow leans in with his faux
concern, pressing for whatever
may pass as gossip, simply do that
mental shrug and shift the conversation
making it brief and pointless as you
casually note you're late for an
appointment, leaving the fellow
bemused and none the wiser. The
residual satisfaction of bypassing
that little social trap could even
proffer a glimpse of hope that the
issue of your pressing concern is not
that grave that time and patience
won't work their magic to resolve.

Illusions

It's a fond conceit that people
cling to, that old adage that
absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In the hope that if one believes it
and it has been articulated as an
article of belief, it must be true. But
there are other truths as well, equally
reflective of humanity that absence,
lack of physical presence serves to
make the break that the mind
recognizes as distance equalling
disaffection, setting aside the warmth
of familial memories and that other
dog-eared belief that blood is thicker
than water. When, in fact, coexistence
between neighbours and friends marks
a constant of presence and familiar
faces engender the familiarity of
habit and commonality of purpose
so when people in need turn to others
it is often not to those who are by
happenstance or alternately deliberate
action distant and remote, but to those
whose presence is assuredly immediate.

Fabulist

In the best and brightest of
her mercurial moods nature will
deign to share her treasures with us.
We have only to venture forth and
to observe with the practised eye of
one absorbed in the world about us
to discover jewels we would rarely
expect to encounter and autumn
is as good a season as any to
bask in the golden glow of an
afternoon sun warming the crisp
air of a fall day. Emerald gleams
in that fabulous orb's rays as they
illuminate still-green foliage but
here and there ruby sparkles
where maples have turned from
green to red under a sapphire sky.
The tumbling silver of a forest
stream reveals diamonds gliding
past where the sun lingers on the
lazy passage of the stream on the
forest floor. And there, there's the
pot of gold of nature's devising; an
old tree stump whose hollow is put
to use as a graceful receptacle for the
furbelowed ruffles of brilliant orange
baubles beloved of nature's conceit
in ornamenting her domain with
the elaborate treasures she devises.

Seasonal Decline

The burnt-bronze of a copse
of beech, the flamboyant red
of the maples, trembling-gold of
birches are autumn-resplendent
among the dark green needles of
spruce, pine and fir. Bright, cheery
haws of Hawthorns swift to shed
their foliage, among the banner-bright
orange-crimson of stag-horn sumac 
for there is no mistaking the season
that has so impetuously overtaken
languid summer, leaving gardens
languishing with spent annuals
even as the forest takes charge
of the season, welcoming the
return of northern birds exchanging
place with their southern-inclined
species, abandoning the frigid
climes of approaching winter,
the last hurrah of butterflies
damselflies and bees
marshalling their final resources
in the life cycle of seasonal decline.

Our Island

Here we are, we two
veterans of a long and happy
life together, carefully dancing
to the refrains of the music
that rocked our world
as teens when over
sixty years ago we
opened our hearts
tender with youth and
yearning to one another.
Dancing as we have
accustomed ourselves
of latter years around the
island standing on our
kitchen floor, and now
at this very time a scant
several weeks post
open-heart surgery. Your
arms around me, guiding me
as you have done throughout
the times of our life as one
hearts beating in a tandem
of love: you, me, 
love and devotion.

Autumn Arras

Clear as the morning dew
and sharp as daybreak's chill
a bluejay's call rings piercing
and true through the fall woods
as a lazy breeze detaches
a rainbow of foliage 
from maples, poplars, birch
and hackberry. Lone bees still
sporadically nuzzle into
sprays of goldenrod and
purple asters. In the shallows
of the forest a stream plods
its route on the geology of the
forest to find its home in a
near-distant river. Bracken
on the forest floor yellows
day by day, subsumed by the
soil. And fungi shapely and
colour-shaded vie with
newly-revealed club mosses
for their place in the
seasonal evolution before
winter's inevitable presence.

Ruin

The wall stands
on the Ontario landscape
rough grey granite
drywall   no mortar
gluing its oneness
hints of a fireplace.

Now   the underbrush intrudes
forest pushing back memory
birds loop the lonely air
and forest creatures
shelter under its shadow.

It could be the
ruins of Ilium
of a Minoan palace
or even Dresden.   The
causes as diverse as
a  wooden   horse

              Santorini
or Allied bombers.    This
wall speaks of the
inevitability of time
flux wrought by nature
by the nature of man.