The Ghost of Peter Pan

Never-Never land exists! Peter Pan has taken

on a new, fresh guise that began with Sunny Ways 

as he led a nation toward a future none might have 

imagined, a lived reality that nature herself has cause 

to clutch her face in astonishment for she too had never

suspected the biological determinations she created 

were merely notional. All that underwent a deep 

transformation and suddenly what was impossible 

became reality and she sulks as the world turned its 

face to a kinder, gentler Zeitgeist where certainties 

and the past have been deemed disposable and in 

their place humble genuflections to the new order 

transmit loyalty to the man in whom boyhood never 

faded, an impish spark of mischief waylaying the leader 

of a nation without borders. The staid world watches

agape as he manifests costumed and waggishly chastises

 all left in the mire of yesteryear. Deriding the laggards 

he pirouettes flawlessly as the harbinger of that New 

World Order with no constraints and no regard for the 

verities of public office, flicking his thumb at the social weal 

no less a nation's law and order, its economic well-being

and people's future aspirations in a land of great

natural resources and opportunities to advance them.

 

 

The Incidental Hunters

 

They're house companions accustomed

to the same comforts their humans live in

with no wish to exit the warmth and security

of a house, luxuriating in their due as

pampered little pets, yet like their humans

they yearn to be in the outside. Not in the

confines of a garden as pampered as they

are, but in the wilds of nature curiously

sniffing and snuffling along forest trails

an ancient collective memory lodged deep

in their subconscious that this truly is their

home. Yet in their home they become avid

hunters should ever a bee, a moth or a fly

enter for they know that flying creatures can

be cruel, stinging and threatening and they vie

between them to spring upon the intruder and

dispatch it to a deserved death that the bee

the moth or the fly evade through their own

instincts of inherited self-preservation.

Fearsome Nature

We are faced daily with news worldwide

of droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes 

floods and landslides, wildfires and cyclonic

rainfalls that turn deadly. Photographs of

firefighters facing wildfire infernos and

mass evacuations with volcanic eruptions

and massive dam failures, communities

facing privation, loss and famine leading to

mass starvation. Nature at its untamed

deadliest unleashing on an unready world

the fracturing effect of extreme elements

answerable to no human agency. Yet the

distemper of the natural world is held to be

nature's reaction to humanity's misuse of

resources at world disposal to advance the

fortunes of humanity carving geological

formations to extract the substances meant

to enhance societies' ease and wealth. And

though a tornado struck nearby our home

wreaking havoc and pain we fortunate ones

take our leisure through standing forests

of nearby approach to revel in the beauty

and majesty of raw nature in the moment.

 

Inconsequential

You've known her as a neighbour for decades

a down-the-street neighbour married to a much 

older man who left his wife and two children for her. 

And as he aged and became infirm foreign travel

beckoned time and again, he to remain in situ she 

to explore the world as a tourist for whom nothing 

and nowhere should be unfamiliar. When he could 

no longer care for himself following surgeries to 

sustain life, time came to move into an end-of-life 

hospice where dementia moved in with him and 

she who demurred at any personal sacrifice of time 

and energy blithely informed the street he had died 

while she was on a trip to Greece. This latest trip 

was to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT and on  her return 

up close and personal to show you photos she suddenly 

yelped !oh! and moved well back. The memento 

of that trip was a COVID infection and while she is 

duly medicated it slipped her mind she is also infectious. 

She always said she intended to age as gracefully 

as you and now near 90 you may not, after all.

The Play's The Thing

The voice-over speaks in mellow tones

of regret at passion spent when the

lightning rod of love loses its fire as a

narrative of unravelling interdependence

on companionship and responsibility  

collapses inert and unresponsive. Time

for the players to gather their costumes

and exit stage left while the audience

transfixed as with any wreckage nods in

sympathy overlaid with derision for the

dissolution of a love match between a

narcissist and a naive emblem of female

trust that love is the ribboned tie that binds

has frayed beyond redemption and her

dignity and value demands a withdrawal

from a play whose second act failed to 

lead to the aspirational journey into the

beyond of memories and elderly years.

Love Lies A'Bleeding

Smug with the confidence of certainty

ordinary people never in doubt of their

sexual orientation that nature ordained for

them held nothing but contempt and overt

hostility for gays and lesbians who defied

the roles that nature intended in procreation

until finally reason prevailed over the passion

of hate transmuted to acceptance and finally

respect for another way of life and love. 

But life and human nature are complex and

idiosyncratic bringing to the fore the issue

of gender dysphoria and the appearance of

boys becoming girls and girls eschewing their

female roles for the comfort of male personae

claiming to unite their brain with their body

igniting a storm of controversy. Now no one

is content in a maze of gender mysteries laying

bare a vast array of choices turning even

those among them in a dismay of rejection.

Gays and lesbians see the premise of their

inalienable rights threatened, the transgendered

claim oppression of disbelief, parents are

aghast their parental rights are alienated

others urging on gay children the lesser societal

burden of altering their birth gender and 

the transgendered are affronted that the

community of drag queens diminish their

authenticity of choice. The public remains

in a state of confusion over the combustibility

of nature''s blueprint dissolved in hysteria.

 

 

Genius

 

The breathtaking achievement of a

collaboration of brilliant scientific minds

building on the discoveries and successes

of others of like persuasion in examining

the possibilities of unlocking nature's

deepest and most intriguing secrets of

existence has brought to light matters of

space, light years beyond our reckoning

while illuminating mysteries of the heavens

and all that is in fathomless space in a

never-ending search to unravel what

nature has wrought and our very own

emergence over aeons of time. Probes

capable of hurtling through interstellar space

communicating with the astrophysicists

monitoring control system panels that

instruct the probes to adjust their antennae

toward Earth, reliant on the expertise of

the scientists to send precise data enabling

ongoing communication, a complex formula

of man manipulating the flight and data of

a superbly designed craft unlocking the

universe for study, suddenly take a leave of

absence, sent incorrect instructions, left an

orphan isolated, billions of remote miles away.