Neither Shame Nor Sorrow

In a shocking criminal conspiracy
mandated by lust and greed we two lovers
of otherwise irreproachable repute made a
shameless pact to become criminal deviants.
I, the Eve to his Adam, the fruit of my
desire lay within temptation's reach; we
sternly tasked by evil intent to grasp the
object and make it ours.  Mine, and of
course, his also.  In the grip of a feverish
intent to commit the unthinkable, with
scant thought to morals, much less civil
responsibility, I played Bonnie, scoping out
exit and entrance while my Clyde swiftly
secured the journal, ripped out the 
ever-so-entrancing page, folded, pocketed it
with a professionally swift deftness that 
filled my palpitating heart with pride, and
we departed the scene of the crime.  The
coveted recipe now mine, I set about to
bake those delectable, giant coconut-lime
cupcakes with white chocolate frosting,
and they were indeed sublime.  That 
purloined page sufficient unto the day, we
jointly delectated over the toothsome
morsels - secret, covert act - of our sin.

Life As Trial

He is resolute and determined,
wincing his way through the pain
he suffers, willing his lean, spare body
barely clothed against the winter wind,
to forge ahead, propelling himself
through the fresh-snowed woodland 
trails, refusing to submit to age and his
body's weary breakdown.  He has been
ill-served, Max has, by relentless time
and merciless nature that ages without
remorse that which was so latterly 
youthfully vibrant.  Now Max, slight
of build and health-beleaguered, must
daily wrestle his wife's inert bulk from
bedroom to bathroom with time out to
exercise his own spare frame.  His life
has not reflected the exquisite perfection
of his native country's fabled clockwork
mechanism.  Gall bladder latterly
excised so soon after heart bypass
surgery, he yet awaits joint replacement
and still gets on with the rhythm and
rhymes of a life well lived; a trial.

Doomed

Friend, if you go out in the woods
this night, you can expect a big surprise.
For this will not be the benign Nursery
Tale woods of child's delight.  The
nocturnal woods are a predator's playground.
The eyes you may encounter reflecting the
moon's silvery sheen are those of raptor
and relentless hunter sniffing the
panicked fear of their prey. This is not
the diurnal woods where songbirds
praise the miracle of creation and
small, adorable furred creatures leap
and frolic in leafy bowers.  This is a 
dark and eerie landscape of shadowy
figures hidden by dark, complicit night,
where victims cower and are in due time
pitilessly devoured, not spared the agony
of the wait in a suspended animation
of unalloyed terror, instinct informing
through their inchoate fear that dark
infinity will soon replace the bright
insouciance of tomorrow's dawn.  Friend,
this is no Teddy Bear's picnic, this
bleak imperative of primal need.

Of Specious Design

What a charming and utterly
disarming scene; one's arrival 
avidly anticipated by creatures
unskilled in conveying their
appreciation of the presence of
those not of their own species,
affirming that there exists complex
interrelations, a symbiosis of gain
and pleasure and survival in Nature's 
ineffable design, her formulae and
procotols puzzling but orderly and 
clockwork-precise, from the
revolution of planets around their suns
to the evolution of various strains
of animal life upon Earth, evincing
their intellectual powers.  We
entertain ourselves, we of the
highest ordained order on the
evolutionary scale, by offering
peanuts to squirrels, a lower order
of mammalian life and they accede
to our little conceit, deigning to be fed
in lieu of their quite capable abilities
to fend for themselves amid plenty.
Be it therefore well understood that
humanity's self-designated status
as the superior among all is specious.

Our Time

We are not meticulous in
our timing.  Punctuality no 
longer orders our lives.  Still
orderly, the progression of the
events that comprise the activities
of our days, but time is an element
of the imagination we feel free
to interpret on impulse, as we
spontaneously respond to our
inner needs.  Responsible
to ourselves, at a lifetime cycle
of the elder years, we have 
become, if not without care,
then perhaps careless of
time's tyranny.  It may remind
us occasionally that it has
picked up pace, threaten to race
along leaving us stranded
but we are content with the
knowledge that time is endless
and where that portion is of
what we have lived, there is yet
more to come, and we sigh,
pleasure surging through us both
for here we are, together.

Deo Gracias

It is a truly splendid object, one whose 
glorious presence, perched upon my
table, offers pleasured awe.  It is, in fact,
a book, a treasury of writing offering 
complementary facsimile plates of 
Medieval art.  There appear on its
smooth, silky, gilded pages poetry
by that famous wordsmith, Anonymous.
But others also, whose names are
familiar, like Malory, Chaucer, Boccaccio.
They have been illustriously paired with
exquisite art of the period; Books of
Hours, virginal Madonnas, glowing
miniatures recalling Raphael, Bosch, 
van Eyck, van de Weyden, Bruegel the 
Elder.  Sumptuous and utterly sublime, 
this treasury is mine to wonder at the 
genius of human art and invention, an 
wonderfully inspired compendium taking 
its inspiration from legend interpreted by 
Lucas Cranach with Anonymous expressing 
deep gratitude for humankind's blessed
fortunes finding wisdom, speech, invention, 
learning and alas, base emotions as well: 
Adam lay y-bounden in a bond, 
Four thousand winters thought he not too long. 
And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, 
As learned men find written in their Book.  
Had not the apple taken been, 
Never would our Lady have been Heaven's Queen. 
Blessed be the time the apple taken was, 
Therefore we may sing, 'Deo gracias'.

Just So

Contrarily and wholly explicably
the meek are not in the process of
inheriting the Earth, nor do their
future prospects look encouraging
should they anticipate, on the highest
stated moral and theological authority
that they must, should, or will.  Not
now, not soon, not ever.  They are
those who defer, who deny entitlements,
demur to praise themselves, apologize
profusely if they are held to blame,
and silently endure.  They will
observe, as always, uncomplainingly
as the self-entitled loud-mouthed boors
and bullies of the world rape its bounty.