That Kind of Day

This has been a crotchety old-man
type of day, foul tempered and
gloomy, threatening rain and
making good on the warning.  The
sky has done its duty to the atmospheric
mood, darkly pouting, shuffling a
battalion of armour-bruised clouds
sending deeply entrenched ill humour
over the innocent landscape. A
bitterly trenchant wind ruffles
tree tops moaning in hapless misery.
No birds sing.  Creatures of the
forest slink about in silent, morose
dudgeon.  The damp and the dark
has exorcised death-blue fungi
to litter the forest floor.  Trees exude
unpleasant succubi.  Truculent blame
squats gnomelike and shadowy
on grizzled old stumps, grimacing,
haunting the embattled woods.

When? All Else Failing

Lesson for the day: logical
assumptions do not necessarily
conclude logically.  Reason would
have it when searching for a
purpose-built item, seek out
purveyors who specialize.

A national franchise heralded
for office supplies, one of many
such to service a large public
clamouring for electronics, they
competitively service a 
distinctive crowd.  Floor displays
whet the consumption appetite
for whatever is desired.

Computer desks, take your pick.
Compressed wood pulp,
particleboard, printed faux
wood-paper surfaces, steel as
fragile as a butterfly wing,
brittle glass - no champions of
quality nor aesthetic value.

Still, the need must be met.
Indecision wracks the process,
comparisons between retailers
prevail.  But a decision reached
and oops, not in stock.  Another
chosen, computer-based inventory
assuring, but oops, sold out.

That Eureka! moment:  in the
basement workshop cluttered with 
tools a solid oak desk of respectable
vintage.  Retrieved, refinished,
endowed anew with a re-purposed
slide-out keyboard tray: in business!

 Total Surrender

He is defenceless against

my intention to bring 

some semblance of order

to his shallow apricot pelt,

too long ungroomed, and

he guised as a neglected 

orphan.  Tiny and defenceless

he has no option but to 

submit after the first few

feeble protests, snarls and

absurdly bared teeth. On my

lap he sprawls, scissors

clicking, light fuzz falling

away, the sun warming us

both, the sound of a cardinal

sweetly distant, and in a

moment he is completely

compliant, held fast in a

slumber of total surrender.

Your Deserving Son

 Those Jewish mothers, so invested

in the welfare of their children,

shuddering with dread should some

untoward event occur to impinge on

the well-being of their own whose

future and contented satisfaction

with life is paramount....  And sometimes

fortune is kind, the son is a scholar of

rare dimensions, his writing superbly 

academic graced with humour, adept

in the arts as well as the humanities

and the physics of heavenly existence, 

an historian, astronomer, artist, musician,

writer; the heart soars with pride.  And

his wife, a paragon of every womanly

and scholarly virtue.  She too, gifted 

in a myriad of ways; best of all, she

who is an ordained Anglican priest

deeply loves your deserving son.

Canadian Rockies

Photographs courtesy J.S. Rosenfeld

Get Over It

While you subscribe to that brilliant 

truism that chance favours the prepared 

mind, clearly you were not adequately

prepared.  No, do not look again.  Yes,

you feel compelled to do just that. Compel

yourself not to.  Do, rather, as you see others

present; studiously looking elsewhere.

Ah, you succumbed to a surreptitious

sidelong glance.  Well, my dear, studied

indifference would have been far more

appropriate. Are you satisfied with

having verified your first fleeting

incredulity?  No, I thought not.  What's

the problem?  Certainly, he is tall, portly,

pallid and elderly and his appearance is,

to put it mildly, a visual challenge.  Get

over it.  You don't think much of that

long, grey-yellow-white hair irregularly

sweeping his shoulders, falling in a

fringe from his very bald crown?  Obviously,

he thinks highly of it as his prerogative.

Kindly, for the sake of polite courtesy,

do not glance again.  My dear, you are

quite plainly incorrigible.  No matter.

Though you're certain you were sufficiently

discreet, a critic's role does not become

you.  What's that yo say?  You think that

man, younger than you but in his mid-sixties

is a flamboyant exhibitionist?  Consider

this: he may merely be expressing an inner

compulsion.  I see - you think his bare,

hairy arms, shoulders, legs are not set

to full aesthetic advantage by the brief

strapless cotton summer frock with its

bright floral print, though the bosom is

amply filled?  My dear, that is your very

own, and one must comment, rigid opinion.

Have We A Bid?

It seemed a brief introduction to
a study of contrasts, as though
some wag had swiftly sketched out
the incongruous juxtaposition of
the two, both attending an auction.
He, tall, slim, distinguished grey,
looked as though he were slumming.
She, tall and corpulent, a colourful,
jaunty straw hat perched on her 
steel-grey head, looked right at home.

This was no prestigious auction house,
but the once-monthly auction of high
value donations at the Salvation Army
thrift shop.  The auctioneer clearly
enjoyed her amateur role, urging
those present to fully appreciate the
outstanding value of a clock, a 
sculpture, framed prints, a hat stand,
an old typewriter, a set of brass scales,
a bookcase, and ... a music stand.

She turned to a stranger seated beside
her to whisper just how much she
craved that music stand.  The pre-bid
price of twenty-five rose steadily in
increments of two and ten.  Hers the
hesitant twos, and his the confident
tens.  At one hundred, twenty seven
dollars suspense reigned supreme.

One could imagine the elegant man
standing before that music stand holding
sheet music, playing a flute.  And she?
The imagination struggled.  In any
event, her agony seemed to be excessively
prolonged,  He looked complacently
entitled and she in contrast looked
bemused, confused.  In any event, it
was not she who finally triumphed.