A Satisfying Life

There is an elegant conformation in there,
deep within the black-grey unruly mop.
Her eyes watch warily beyond their
impairment. She trusts only to a certain
degree, insisting on her venerable entitlements.
She does not now take kindly to the usual
ministrations and unwanted manipulations
that offend her sovereign integrity and dignity.

Grooming results please us, but not of
necessity, her. It is, after all, her hair, her
teeth, her nails that we so officiously insist on
engaging with, and she feels understandably
affronted at our presumption, for she does not
impose her values upon us, so why must we
incessantly discommode her peace?

It helps not one iota that she now hears nothing
and sees almost as much. We do insist, on
occasion, that she submit to the process
whereby extraneous hair is shorn and once
again emerges the lovely little dog we adopted
eighteen years ago. Regardless, she would
much prefer not to be so importuned.

Take it or leave her be, for she yet remains
capable of and interested in long, guided
woodland rambles, albeit now forgetful of
long-familiar direction. And she remains
staunchly committed to meal times, with their
very important, anticipated treats. What more,
after all, should a satisfying life be comprised of? 

 

 

 

The Adventure of Life

 

There is a large old Golden Retriever
charged with the care and safety of the
two boys. It is clear she takes her charge
seriously, for she has an anxious look about
her as she paces between them, then races
after their downhill runs. The boys pay no
mind to the old dog, they are deep in the
pleasure of speed, giddy with the bold
power and excitement that envelopes them.

Each grasps his neat little skeleton sled,
takes his running start, then collapses onto
the sled fast dissolving into the long, snowbound
hill glazed by their countless spurts, with a
thick and slippery ice covering. The wind and
high spirits have painted their cheeks like
little drummer boys. Their voices rise to
challenge one another to greater exploits.

At the base of that long slope into the heavily
treed ravine stands an old pine which they evade
nicely, steering their snowcraft left or right;
sinister toward the icy, still-running creekbed,
dexter alongside an old trail skirting the creek.
A pileated woodpecker sounds its lunatic cry,
as though mocking them but the sound is lost
within their own peals of laughter.

The dog dashes desperately beside them,
its protective mission no slight delusion.
It clambers uphill when they do, each time
awaiting the signal to return home to security
and comfort. But the boys will have none of it.
The dense snowpack absorbs their shouts of
pure joy in the absorption of life's adventures. 

 

 

The Holy Day Domain

 

We have merged ourselves seamlessly into
a picture-perfect Christmas landscape
in a Northern clime. This day marks the
Winter Solstice, the shortest day-lit
event of the fading year. The moon has
revealed its dim, light-perfect orb
before slipping behind a veil of bright
clouds, obscuring the sun that would
shine. The tidal bore of the ocean today
higher, more powerful than is its wont.

That full moon, uniquely close to our
Earth, these days of a rare lunar eclipse
has called the seas to rise and surge
to achieve the fiercest tides on the calendar.
Globally, Europe has been battered by
vicious winter storms, high winds and
flooding rains. An earthquake strike
off Japan's coast is stoking a tsunami.

But here, all is peace and sublime serenity
as we lope through the still, snow-garbed
forest pathways. Even the birds are oddly
silent. The atmosphere is severely chilled
the wind plays nip-and-sting on our faces.
Evergreen boughs are stiffly laden with
layers of snow, freezing rain, ice pellets
and more snow. Everywhere we look
appears, in the forest interior, a wondrous
ice palace, smoothed with fluffy snow.

Animal tracks precede our own, readily
discerned. The scintillating delicacy of the
monochromatic landscape is brightened
and clarified by the silver light streaming
into the world below from the heavens above.
A light that so clearly emphasizes brilliant
shades of green under snow-packed trees.

The luscious orange of frost-split
bittersweet berries twined appealingly
along tree trunks; nature's improvised
seasonal decor. The ambient silence becomes
host, time and again, to aircraft splitting
the clouds toward holiday destinations. 

 

 

Where Are You?

 

They're there, simply there, though not
often seen when geography creates distance.
A vague acknowledgement that one has
sisters and brothers that time has
distanced. Absence makes memory
fainter, not necessarily fonder and little
time and emotion is harnessed to stray
thoughts of their lack of presence, despite
early shared familial experiences.

Yet, as we age and our lives move ever
yet tangentially, there arises the piquant
sadness of longing for something lost and
neglected. With age comes illness and
emotional deprivations; the realization
that we are alone, the inspiration to
re-discover lost siblings, the urge and
the spur to act, to reach out, to recover.

Shared blood and belonging now entreats
the elderly to reach back in time and
memory, to find that elusive comfort, the
mutual sympathy siblings harbour for one
another as they move inexorably toward
life's concluding stages. The instant grasping
of rapport re-visited, the tenderness, the
unspoken grief and gratitude, all there
awaiting that call to rescind distance
and emotional wavering of uncertainty.

There is much to say, to express, to
commiserate with, to update and to pledge
for the future. To casually, carelessly lose
grasp of those binding ties an error in
judgement reflecting bereft values and a life
too concerned with surface issues of scant
moment. To restore the loss requires a
simple resolution: I am here, where are you?
Please, meet me half way to our future. 

 

 

 

Note To Self

 

Note to self: relax. This is a fairly routine procedure,
thanks to modern medical technology. Routine for
the vulnerable elderly. Yes, you are now among that
venerable contingent. Do not unduly concern yourself,
for a renowned and skilled ophthalmology surgeon
will operate. What can possibly go wrong?

Purely rhetorical, not meant for you to muse upon
that query; a clear invitation to uninformed conjecture.
The bedside alarm rings you awake - as though, in any
event, you were yet sound asleep. The early morning
news is on. First item on the line-up: a news release
that the hospital to which you will be admitted is
struggling to cope with a deadly outbreak of
antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

You shower, feed your little dogs, clean up the ordure
the frail elderly one deposited in the kitchen right after
you let her in from the inclement outdoors. On the road
traffic is congested, though past the rush hour; likely
frantic Christmas shoppers, but you will arrive at the
surgical unit of the hospital with adequate time to spare.
Forget the sleet, the dull grey of a storm-driven atmosphere
speak to your nervous and concerned husband.

Persuade him there is no valid reason for him to remain
there in that place, along with all the others awaiting
their surgeries. Best for him to return home, then come
along when you've rested, post-surgery. Focus on
disrobing, pulling hospital fashions over your body
shuffling along the corridor in blue paper slippers
gown billowing behind, too large for your small frame.

The smiling nurse, the interview pre-surgery, the careful
irritating fusillade of eye drops, the blood oxygen tests
above all the sky-high blood pressure test. You know very
well that high reading is not representative of white-coat
syndrome, and wryly state so. We will judge your pain
post-surgery on a zero-to-ten scale she advises quietly.
You will be given a prescription to cope. Coping. 

 

Fleeting Impressions

 

Our boots sink deeply into the vast luxury of
fresh-fallen snow. The wide, blue sky guarantees
an icy atmosphere below, for the winter sun
only pretends in its radiant conceit, to warm
all it benevolently surveys. At other seasons
that flaming disk becomes a fiery oven
in winter a wanly insouciant pretender.

It is the ascendant wind that now occupies
the regal weather throne, tormenting the
hapless with its icy, probing fingers, digging
deeply, diligently into protective feathers, fur
and impotent integuments. The enveloping cold
of winter, conspiring with shortened daylight
hours, burden nature's creatures with
long, dark and chill months best slept away.

But there is also transcendent loveliness in
the white veil cast bewitchingly over all that
is open to the heavens. Our eyes linger
transfixed upon that vision. Snow clusters
cling plumply to branches, cushion the
outspread boughs of evergreens, softly
outlining contours and depressions, mounding
the landscape in clouds of white crystals.

The wind that leaves us breathless in its chill
embrace lifts long evanescent skeins of flakes 
like a myriad of stars in the Milky Way from
laden trees, forming a waterfall of glittering
beauty before our eyes. Where seconds before
tracks we have left in the snow joined those of
woodland creatures, suddenly the wind's
scattering eliminates all, leaving a pristine
impression of a smoothly featureless white. 

 

 

 

Skip One Generation

It is a conundrum. Why, that is, people
have children. As a way to complicate lives
nothing else quite matches child-rearing
for resulting agitation, confusion, frustration.
The child questions and challenges the parents'
authority while the parents attempt to fulfill
their parental mandate to guide, protect
encourage and support their offspring.

Difficulties in achieving this most basic
of human social protocols, to obey nature's
first law of survival through genetic inheritance
bumps hard up against nature's other imperative
the child's quest for affirmation of independence.
The parent-child gulf of one separating generation
is so profoundly vast as to produce a malfunctioning
relationship not readily amenable to being breached.

The patent relief on the psyche of both parent
and child when they are finally free of one another's
daily puzzling divisions of temperament, values
priorities, are profound. The parents' revenge, as it
were, is realized finally on seeing their children
join the ranks of parents themselves, confronted
by the very reflection of parent-child dissonance.

Only the grandparents are firmly in the child's
self-obsessed, entitled orbit, holding no brief for
their own children suddenly confronted by that
all-too-familiar challenge. Oppositional divides
widen, converge. The new parents' methodology
confronted by the old parents whose memory
of their own efforts remain sharply astringent .

Emotions lavished on the new generation in a
conspiracy linking children and grandparents
excluding the parents, the agony of raising
children reveals its purpose as a necessary albeit
blighted tedium whose end result, the grandchildren
who can do no wrong, delights the grandparents
into a state of exuberant elderly amnesia.