To The Manor Borne

Royalty knows its place, one like none
other; where once it was the masses that
served their imperial highnesses modernity
has decreed that now those of high royal
birth whose status remains funded by the
great public, now serve the masses and the
greater interests of society, a society unable
to expunge from its imagination nobility's
vaunted presence celebrating high birth's
unique place in societies priding themselves
on egalitarian progressiveness. Royal
houses seek to find favour increasingly
by appearing as one of the masses they so
ably represent, accepting they are but human
albeit of a gilded variety, and eager to curry
favour of those taxed to fund a sumptuous
lifestyle burdened with public service, no longer
seek out those of extended royal blood for
marriage. Youthful iterations of nobility
search out their own choices and invariably
introduce their royal forbears to commoners
of heart-stealing virtue. Alas, genetics impinge
and those to the manner born in superior
self-regard scorn tradition and the trappings
of royalty, sending head-spinning messages
of rejection as  they indulge in lese-majeste.

 

 

The Urban Wilderness

It was a natural wilderness seldom
penetrated, a large, extended gash in
the earth, a thickly forested landscape
surrounded by farms on land long
settled and arable aside from the 
resistant geology of the ravine. Urban
sprawl displaced the farms but nothing
could displace the ravine and the forest
and the water coursing through the ravine
floor. In that forest groundbirds flourished
alongside a panoply of small furry
creatures and predators both winged
and furred. As houses were built on the
ravine's perimeter migratory corridors
closed and deer became scarce though
more adaptable creatures remained
cherishing an extended food source
cadged from human waste. Residents of
nearby neighbourhoods valued the forest
a recreational haven where dogs could be
free to spurt into the forest interior and
emerge exercised and happy. Foxes and
raccoons abounded alongside smaller fry
until the abundance of wildlife contracted
when coyotes adopted the habitat treasured
by all. Now, companion dogs' exquisitely
sensitive detection senses are on alert
quietly detecting the presence of alpha
predators bold enough to confront both
dogs and their walkers confident in their
natural rights in this still-wild haven.

Tell Me This

If all the world's a stage, good bard and  
we play out our lives in hopes and fears
the drama's on us, whether it be the
sadness imposed when ill fate becomes
us or the joy that ensues when good
fortune beams its best our way. We
aspire and trust, anticipate and forge
a future as best we can never knowing
the outcome as actors on life's stage.
So if life is a theatre of happenstance
in our waking hours what then is
sleep when our subconscious elevates
our minds to another dimension always
familiar, sometimes fraught and very
occasionally brimming with happy
intimates. To sleep, perchance to
dream, and we do, hoping that we may
bypass the demons haunting our psyches
in favour of the gentleness of love and
nostalgia in the understanding that life
is prelude to eternal dreams. Unless
of course dreams are the entry to life?
Tell me do, can we enjoy one lacking
the presence of the mysterious other?

Mistress of the Garden

Mistress of the Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gardens, muted of colour
form, texture, fragrance
are now a collapsed
architecture, delighting us
no longer as fall deepens
into garden-bleak winter.

Gone the thriving, brilliant
choreography, the boundless
exuberance of bulbs and tubers
bursting into flower, the shrubs
and fruit trees showering petals
transformed into luscious fruit.

The garden now is pallid,
exhausted, its summer audition
long past, the chorus of blooms
extinguished, no encores as the
final departure of leafy canopy
has descended echoing dismay.

The curtain is prepared now to fall.
The last bow and curtsy executed
as nature asserts sovereignty.
Casually deflects assumptions our
efforts reflected ownership
of carefully plotted, nurtured
triumphant gardenscapes.

There is no perpetuity here, merely
the gardener's eccentricity in believing
she exerted control over the order of
her gardening efforts. A brief, illusory
delusion, a borrowed vision, a hallowed
trust now returned to nature
and winter's ascendancy. 

 

 

 

 

The Dark Curtain of Night

This untouched forest is a gift to nearby urban
dwellers though most are oblivious of its
presence on the outskirts of large metropolitan
city, preserved as a natural setting for wildlife
because of its geology, unwelcoming to the
plans of developers where nature has devised
a deep and long, winding ravine where
conifers and deciduous trees grow large and
plentiful and generations of nature lovers
have forged trails through the once-dense
underbrush absent now of grouse and pheasant
still visited by hawks and owls those avian
hunters whose presence so alarms songbirds.
Deer are now seldom seen as the urban mass
has grown tighter around the nature preserve
but coyotes find there a perfect habitat teeming
with small furry wildlife blithely furnishing
nests with vulnerable offspring. The forest
interior is perpetually dim and fantastical
in winter snugly comforted with layers of
snow and daylight hours short, dusk exerting
its presence in the low hum of murmurs and
sighs, the wind soughing through branches and
boughs, animals and birds settling down
awaiting the dark curtain of nightfall.

Arming The Faithful

In a world obsessed with the wonders
of high tech, give some thought to the
preoccupation of Islam's ventures in faith
introducing to the world the advances
that can be made in asymmetrical
warfare with the use of low-tech and
no-tech, simply ingeniously using tools
at hand beginning with tasking the devout
to prove the strength of their faith in jihad
with the ultimate sacrifice exalted in
the noble robes of martyrdom and heroism
to which end suicide vests become the
explosive devices of first choice followed
in haste by the simple medium of
improvised explosive devices as an
example, and for truly maximum impact
in the efficacy of holy wars astutely
diverting passenger jets as missiles 
aiming to strike symbolic high-rise 
edifices housing thousands of those
unpliant non-believers as their just due
for insulting the Prophet. And during times
of high tension confronted by powerful
states whose enmity augers conventional
warfare their armaments well equipped
to extinguish the ambitions of conquest
full use of deadly missiles in planned
mass slaughter to send the world into
disbelief at the commission of war crimes
yet not seen as such by the perpetrators who
profess no responsibility for the carnage
and cast blame on those surreptitiously
assaulted by proxy militias on order
from none other than the sacred scripts
of a holy spirit whose disciples are legion.

 
 

Unquestioned Faith

William Blake

Unquestioned Faith

What a conundrum it is that the human psyche 
finds no rest within its spirit in the absence of
the recognition of faith in a spiritual and heavenly 
instructor whose divine guidance resonates in 
the human soul with gratitude that such an 
all-powerful spirit, one whose nature it is to 
permit the existence of all that is and to grant
humanity exceptional stewardship of all
creation as the centre of the universal being 
of all that is and will ever be, favoured as they 
are with the instruction to worship none other 
for all are false posing as prophets claiming 
kinship with the almighty one, of whom there
is none other. Peace and loving kindness the 
primary observation of this tender god in whose 
name and thunderously pious injunctions to 
follow and bear witness bringing others to his 
celestial knee, in the process striking the terror 
of anger in no wise suppressed should human 
actions displease the spirit in whose name peace
and loving kindness is proffered to all, even the
misguided, choosing to abstain from serving 
god's will, who for their unfortunate choice must 
vacate life, for what the holy spirit has created 
that same spirit can uncreate, with the avid
helpfulness of those of unquestioned verities.