Winter Elements

Winter Elements

The soft, mouse-grey sky
canopies the landscape
lavishly curvaceous with
buoyant snow from yesterday's
blizzard that brought a
mesmerizing disquietude
to Nature's humble creatures.

An icy chill has asserted
over the land, settling into winter.
The orb of the sun gleams softly,
intermittently casting tender
beams of light to highlight
here and there the track
of a hare, the wingspread
of some night-time hunter.

Malevolently-driven winds
harnessing the weather to
an ultimate degree of dislocated
anarchy prevails. Hurling itself
at all that presume to present
in its imperious path. Now
settled into a moderately
persistent presence.

Groaning, moaning, clacking
forested tree tops. Toppling
snow drifts sitting on tree stumps
like ice cream on their cones,
the bundled snow falling softly
creating a landscape of its very own.
The creek streams silently onward
its banks softened in silver sides.

Fall malingerers are placed
on notice; stay, and surrender
to an unaccustomed harshness
of climate in degrees and ferocity
not been equipped to surmount.
If survival is your goal - take flight!

Casual Encounter

Long past middle age, when
hope for the future generally
subsides into a sighing gloom of
acceptance, it seemed at a cursory
glance that life had been quite
unkind to this man shrunk into
the cavity of himself, shabbily
dressed, canvass shopping bag
in hand, and a blankly confused
look approaching panic on his 
face. He was fumbling in his
coat pocket and so was I, wondering
where that quarter to redeem a
shopping cart at the supermarket
I'd stashed there had gone to.
Need a quarter? asked my wife
of the stranger as a wry smile
gathered momentum on his face.
One for him, another for me. 
He swiftly took possession of a
cart, but those in the lines I tried
were stuck fast. Before moving on
with his prize, the stranger applied
his slender weight to mine to force
separation, then we each nodded,
a good turn done, to get on with
the waiting grocery-gathering.

The Compelling Winds

The Compelling Winds

The shy little cousins of the wind - the gentle
zephyr, the breeze, stand by regarding the fully
mature wind with awe. The puissant grandeur
of the wind, its assured and determined mission
against which all of nature's creatures quail,
instructs and guides the breeze and the zephyr,
but they will never be capable of instilling
dread and fear in the pursuit of their assigned
roles within nature's indomitable schemes.

The gentle ones soothe, they cool and refresh,
they are met with calm expectation. Yet
they longingly regard the fearful esteem the
wind's fury elicits in its many fearful guises as
intemperate, fierce, pitiless, bitter, raw,
destructive and unstoppable in its self-tasked
guidance heralding atmospheric change, posing
by degrees as a hurricane, a tornado, a blunt
force blast furnace shielding its ferocious intent
behind innocent sounding names like el nino and
la nina. Snowy blizzards erasing vision and warmth,
torrential rains abetted by howling winds reveal
facets of the weather phenomena so genially
visited upon this Globe by the great Earth Mother.

Wind becomes a co-conspirator with fire,
wreaking havoc on the flora and fauna lest there
remain any doubts who sits at nature's right-hand
side; the sinister by right of conquest and
domineering intent. From the enabling resources
of the environment's firestorms to the sweeping
guidance of ice storms shredding all that stands
before them. Volcanic vapour and fiery ashes
spread far and wide over land, sea and air.
Wind-whipped ocean storms breeding gigantic
vessel-killer waves and deadly land-sweeping
tsunamis; the wind whips, master of all.

Angelic Antagonism

It was an uncongenial meeting
one conspicuous, the other
hardly so. One securely nestled
in the arms of its human, the
other comfortable and barely 
seen resting its minuscule body
on the wares. The kitten's home
was the pet shop, to freely
make its way around that
circumscribed world of shelving
piled with pet products, surely
Paradise for the tiny creature,
independent of its more 
robust sibling sharing the haven.
Their security and entitlement
beyond question in their ease
and unconcern at the ongoing
presence of dogs entering and
exiting with their owners. Perhaps
the occasional standoff gave
drama to their lazy, hazy days.
As when the pint-sized kitten
gave notice to the toy poodle
pup that his inquisitiveness
was downright rude which the
resulting hiss-and-arch made 
more than abundantly clear.

 

Hope Springs ...

Dawn has become an earlier
riser these days, flooding our
bedroom in shadow-chasing
light penetrating closed eyelids
urging mind and body to be
roused. In my ears, the sound of
birdsong trickling through
closed windows keeping out
late-winter wind-blasts, snow
and icy temperatures.Too soon 
yet for spring's tentative entrance,
yet the emerging colour plumage
of goldfinches and cardinals
excite their springtime musical
repertoire fostering in me the
hope their promise of life's
seasonal renewal is less a dream
than the horizon's hovering reality.

The Time Remembered

A treasure discovered, hours
dedicated on a French-language
radio station to the sublime
music of our youth; the sounds,
the bands, the singers romancing
us in the 50s and 60s when we 
were enraptured in one another's
presence and danced the evening
hours away. And now, a half-century
later, you wrap me in your arms
and move with me, smoothly
and lovingly, to those wonderful
old refrains of love ever-lasting,
our kitchen floor the dance
hall of the time remembered.

 

Revelation

I really did see it coming,
slowly unfolding, my gradual
transformation from daughter
becoming my own mother. There
she is now, where I thought I
was. But the me I thought I was
appears to have dissolved. I
recognize her quirks and her
mannerisms, her frowns and 
her exhalations, her pains and
her fading presence. All somehow
assembled in my being. Was a
time my nimble fingers 
threaded her needle. When I
read for her the fine print with
careless ease. Even mothered her
late-born last child. Now that
child prepares for his retirement.
And I, regarding the face
confronting me in the mirror
marvel at seeing my mother, but
cannot explain to her enquiring
eye where her daughter is.