We Are Grateful

We have joyfully shared comradeship
for so many years, it is difficult to
imagine life without her. She has
trusted us to return with her, safe and
content, after all our adventures,
none of which, as a small and delicate
dog, had she ever shirked, but met full
on, trustingly and as curious as we.

She has canoed lakes and rivers with
us, portaged long stretches of broken
trails, snuggled deep down into our
shared sleeping bag after torrential
forest storms, climbed mountain peaks
under the sun's fierce glare, leaped
boulders that daunted us, her guides.

She has outlived those of her canine
peers when as a puppy, she was being
introduced to the arcane world of canines
and their human pack leaders. She has
grown progressively fragile, dim of sight,
faint of hearing and inexplicably mute.
Her dark eyes see far-off visions that we
cannot see, and she stands motionless,
waiting for something we cannot know.

She must linger yet awhile with us,
for nothing, including her growing
feebleness, has yet convinced us she
must leave. She yet craves life, so it
must be carefully nurtured. The great
adventure that lurks too near, which will
be hers alone this time, has been waylaid
and we are, for the moment, grateful.

A Gentle Giant

He's a good neighbour, a perfectly nice
man, who never fails to ask your opinion
and advice, perversely to ignore it and
proceed elsewise. The possessor of a
stately blue spruce, he claimed it imposed
upon the maple that had ventured as a
gifted seedling within his lawn which he
tenderly nurtured to maturity, though
the two had more than ample space for
amicable growth. In came an arborist,
down came the flawless specimen tree
in all its ornamental perfection.

Its pungently aromatic boughs
festooned the lawn, then were carted
off for a proper burial. Its large and
sturdy trunk carved to sections, its stump
and roots to ground level left to languish.
A perfectly spherical, raised flowerbed
installed over the grave. And yes, I
divided perennials and gave them to
my neighbour for his new central lawn
piece, even as I mourned the untimely
departure of an admired gentle giant.

Life Electronic

Newly aged fifteen, she is a lone and
lonely child, home in a semi-isolated
stretch of rural property, school out
for the summer months and she is
b-o-r-e-d. There is no cure for the
moody teens, one must simply forbear.
As for missed siblings, those are among
the manifold details of her young life.

Iterations and reiterations of boredom
solve nothing. Where once, in still
living memory she would have been
assigned household tasks, none now
urgently present. Time yawns at her
imaginative disposal. Social interaction
at a remote, as near as a texting cellphone,
as distant as an actual human touch.

Reaching toward and embracing
opportunity and the flexing of the curious
mind, where once an Encyclopedia, the
presence of grandparents, the ubiquity
of public libraries enabled entry to
knowledge and wisdom, now the
World Wide Web that internets us to
the information age offers her books
on order, poetry readings, geography
lessons, science facts, introductions
to art, archaeology and architecture,
studies in human development and more.

Lonely? For What, please tell.... The
whispered confidence of one standing
directly beside her. A laugh shared by
someone hosting both physical presence
and amused sensibilities. A silence and an
oppressive sense of social alienation by one
for whom extended solitude expresses a
longing for comfort in peer companionship.
Failing that, she endures, her brain steeped
in the profound mystery of life electronic.

Nature's Reckoning

There is still a faded sign remaining
reading "private" verging where
public property exists and which
should include that stretch of ravined
forested streambed the sign identifies.
An inexplicable legal glitch representing
personal entitlement where none should
be. A pillar of his community, church
elder, friends on the municipal,
law-making, law-breaking council.

The once lovingly, energetically tended
area, where he worked mightily in his
retirement years to wrest the initiative
from nature in his own untamed gardening
zeal had produced from her raw elements
through his botanical vision a veritable
hanging gardens albeit replete with
plants that ancient Babylon never saw.

He moved mountains of seasonal
detritus to be replaced laboriously by
richly amended soil, where ordered and
mannerly ornamental trees, shrubs
and perennials would lustily thrive.
He constructed an elaborate series of
stairs and terraces, arbors and gazebos,
fountains and ponds where swam exotic
gold and silver fish from the East.

Where sun filtered through the forest
canopy he planted perennials that thrived
in semi-shade, and where shade prevailed
he thoughtfully planted shade-loving plants.
He surveyed his work and proclaimed it
good, then posted additional "private"
and "keep out" warning signs lest anyone
blunder unaware, upon his treasures.

He feasted his eyes and his gloating pride
upon his success, his Shangri-la, inviting
glossy gardening journals to come along
at his behest to photograph and feature
his very private, exclusive, most exceptional
Paradise. Viewers were charmed, enthralled
and outraged at his assumption of the private
upon the public space and much heated
discussion ensued, two camps emerging,
those who deplored his hubris and those
who staunchly defended his green genius.

All moot, now. Nature has reclaimed her
possession. Gone the plethora of urns and
overflowing terra-cotta pots brimful of form,
texture and colourful blooms. Gone the leisure
chairs, lounges and tea tables. The stream now
runs unimpeded - gone the pools and the
exotic fish. Squirrels now run freely, no longer
trapped and excluded. Time has swept him into
history and his gardens to nature's reckoning.

Sanctuary (1)

The trees bare as straw brooms
bleed bright yellow blazes,
sharp counterpoint on grey beech;
dark needles of conifers
comb the winter air
shoved by a bitter wind.
The snow is loosely sifted
glaringly bright under the winter sun
as we cross-tuft a pattern
striding snowshoed. The
silence echoes as we whisper
in the cathedral stillness of the wood
watch two deer panic
red rumps flicking white flags
dark droppings steaming in the snow.
They're still spooked by vague
ghosts of hunting incursions
in this game sanctuary.

(We'd watched helplessly
as scaups frantically
beat the air
rising from a quiet autumn lake
air thick with shot. Later
looked down from protected heights
as a deer veed another lake
trying to escape the hunters
finally standing
frozen in fear
on the cusp of the lake
a perfect target.)

They're forgetful in the summer,
memory of terror dimmed
let us watch them browsing.
Yet it was just last summer
we discovered this same forest pathway
plush with fawn-coloured hair
yawning with the chalk-white
skull of an unwary deer.

Candid Camera

Oh, so comfortably I sit on a
cushioned glider, tiny companion
dog asleep beside me, as a robin
sings brilliantly in the garden below
and rain pelts the canopy sheltering
us. We could abandon our outdoor
leisure perch but no need,
as we're kept dry and secure.

This is our outdoor space as
extension of our indoor haven
from the vicissitudes of the elements.
From our shared shelter can be
observed the bright orange sprays
of blooming honeysuckle, the
manifold-petalled, exquisitely
frangranced peonies and the
deep-pink roses bursting pride.

The steady sound of the rain
under the aluminum-coloured
aquarium that has become the sky
a comforting murmur nurturing
the gardens below, filling the
bird-bath that will delight the
robins anticipating the festive
offerings emerging from the
creature-drenched garden soil.

Life as Mystery

Like a primeval vision, mist lifts hazily
from the turgidly swollen water rushing along the
forested ravine. The mist aspires toward the sky,
as though to return to the darkly enveloping clouds
still lowering above, though a scant half-hour
before they had bathed the landscape in torrents
of rain, still gathering on hillsides and spilling
into the ravine below, freshly endowing the mud-roiling
creek, its surface surfeit with the storm's detritus.

The dark, outspread wings of crows crest on the
wet wind, their calls absorbed into the moist air.
Tree foliage, slick-bright in shades of living greens,
steadily drip excess. The fruit of the hazelnut shrubs
increasing their volume, well irrigated by nature's
generosity. A hare leaps into the underbrush, stops,
alert suddenly to instinct's ancient awareness
and the imperative invested in survival.

It is from a distance, although not remotely,
that the echo and re-echo of an owl reverberates
and repeats urgently, and the drenched but brilliant
landscape sinks into its mysterious thrum of life
and cessation, all assuming myriad forms
in the endless, purposeful pursuit whereby
each life form, each exceptional organism,
finds its hallowed place, and strives to retain it.