The Dilemma

Really, it's ridiculous. These items are
my personal property. I wear them. They
are indispensable in their basic utility.
Yet no matter how much time I set aside
to reasonably impress that simple fact on
him, he fails to acknowledge that these
things do not belong to him and his
constant assumption that he is free to
make off with them is becoming tiresome.
His sister is much more reasonable. She
never sneaks about to nose them out and
make off with them, just her brother does.
Of course, once he puts them proprietarily
in the toy chest she assumes, reasonably
enough, that they're fair game to play 
with. It's not as though he's deprived. He
was presented with very similar items to
regard as his personal possessions. He
seemed pleased and played with them at
first, but since placing them among his toys
he ignores them and continues to seek mine
out, relentlessly. When I rescue mine I can
hear his little feet padding purposefully
after me and I know the minute I leave them
where I can handily retrieve them when
needed, he'll reclaim them. They're my
socks, my gloves. He's incorrigible.

Fall Inventory

The massive old willow squatting stolidly
 at the bottom of the forested ravine, roots
not far from the muddy creek running 
through the forest, will be the last to lose its 
foliage in this mixed-woodland landscape 
of deciduous and evergreens where woolly-bear 
caterpillars creep along the forest floor 
searching out cocooning sites before winter 
onset. Bluejays scream from the masts of tall 
pines, just passing through on their journey 
from the summertime boreal forest to southern 
landscapes for the winter months. That old 
spruce whose lean is now almost perpendicular
though its roots remain firmly entrenched in 
the forest soil may see its last winter this year. 
A maple seedling that had ensconced itself 
at the foot of an old pine is a blaze of red 
against the stern ridges of the pine. Dressed 
for fall, an understory fir sapling's slender boughs
have caught the cast-off foliage of the forest canopy. 
The autumn wind blows a confetti of foliage 
off unresisting trees. Another chorus of geese
flying in arrowed formation across the sky 
signals the arrival of another season. Bees and
hover-flies drift about the last of the fall asters.
The chariot of the sun fleets across the sky 
at a lower angle, setting behind the horizon 
with breathtaking speed as dusk creeps in to 
fill the vacuum departing light has left behind.
In the still of night breezes, the slight chirps of
migrating songbirds waft through the air stoically
calling comfort and courage to one another.

Orientation

From the broken spire of an old pine
a bluejay sends out its shrill shriek
of warning as below singly, in pairs
or small groups young people flock
through the forest, on trails and off
behaving as though time is of the
essence in an orientation contest each
is determined to distinguish their
skills in. Grasping a printed sheet
with instructions, they stream through
around and past the trails, ascending
and descending hills, their voices
resounding in excited calls as they
pause to 'sign in' to areas they pass in
proof of their prowess though theirs is
a raw and new experience, pursuing
nature in her own home when their
usual pursuits reflect a different type
of carousing altogether. Garbed in a
uniform black, girls and boys from
pre-adolescence to late teens stream
in and out focused on the task at hand
their environment simply incidental
to the importance of their assigned goal.

Dana

Diminutive, the tot, as useful a one-word
description as any for this knee-high
to-a-grasshopper child with the neutral
but charming name she is swift to proffer.
Delicate facial features under her hood
only discerned as a little girl when she
casually slides it away, fine golden curls
framing her face, inquisitive eyes turned
directly toward my own, frank curiosity
brimming with questions starting with my
own name. A child of obviously precocious
language skills and a cognitive capacity
to match, engaging and direct. From the
start of life's trajectory to the end, she is
two and I am 82. And nor may I insult this
child's intelligence by directing conversation
to her parents, they indulging the drive of 
her questioning spirit, addressing me as 
one adult to another, displaying in her 
command of language and firm demeanor
how her future will unfold and the manner
in which she will be prepared to forge
her destiny in this most cranky of worlds.

 

Fleeting Time

No, really, it is in all innocence
that I pose the question: What 
happened? Bear me out as I
explain. It was, after all, only
yesterday that all the winter
clothing was put away, the furnace
turned off, summer garb brought 
out, the garden planted, a vacation 
away scheduled and prospects 
for a carefree summer seemed
inevitable. We would immerse
ourselves in the freedom of kind
weather and indulge in all the
many pleasures that summer
promises to deliver. Yes, I most
distinctly recall complaining
about the heat and humidity
the excess rain that delighted
the garden and deluged us
relentlessly. I recall not minding
it so very much and relaxing in
the comfort of a benign summer.
Was it those complaints that
spurred nature to unceremoniously
usher in the cold and the wind to
deprive us of spontaneity? I do
feel a sense of remorse as though
I am responsible somehow for
taking it all for granted, and now
must deal with the consequences.
Still, my consternation is real, not
imagined and I cannot understand
why I assumed summer to have
arrived and given us pleasure now
that I am hauling out cold-weather
clothing, putting the garden to sleep
and preparing to shovel snow.

 

The Illogic of Faith

Language and perception can result in
a complex misappropriation of reality
and cerebral balance when it becomes
captive to an ideology of extraordinary
dysfunction perverting both in service to
a malignant purpose designed to capture
minds into a corrupted view of belief in
a divine ideal. Instilling the faith of
devotion deep within the sensibilities
of those vulnerable to the persuasion of
a supreme entity's will through the 
auspices of an assumed edifyingly divine 
script of the virtues inherent in surrendering
personal autonomy to the edicts of belief
binging believers in close proximity
to the divine and the promise of life
sustained in another dimension relies 
on convincing the faithful to commit
to surrender as peace, and rejection as
war. Peace must then wage its committed
campaign against the non-believers
representing war to bring them into a
hallowed state of peace. Corruption of
logic complete ... violent 'liberation'
creating a state of peace, out of terror.

Asian Hegemon 

What could possibly be a source of
threat from a massive country that prides
itself on the concept of harmony? Does
that not, after all, connote pacification
good relations, lack of opposition and
strife avoidance? What could go wrong 
in the global promotion of and desire to
attain harmony? Much depends on what
must be sacrificed to achieve that goal.  
For example, independence, freedom
liberty, sovereignty and human rights
entitlements that critics and protesters
acclaim while rejecting the imposed 
status of vassals, as 'splitists', hoping to
regain the losses the arbiters of harmony
have forced upon them in their campaign
of oppression and conquest in a world
where emerging economies look upon
offers of financial assistance and regional
infrastructure improvements as simply
irresistible,  falling into that fabled
spider's trap set for untold legions of
naive flies eager to gain, oblivious to 
all they must lose, compromising their
national integrity to the hungry maw of
that smiling, most generous hegemon.