Thoughts on a Marriage

By no means do we distrust or not hold
in high regard the fundamental trades
much less hard-working tradesmen but
the simple fact is that we have seldom
required their services since my husband
is the original Jack-of-all-trades -- you
remember that proverbial Everyman who
seems to no longer exist in a society where
there is a specialist for everything and few
really have any interest in getting down
and dirty to look after their own concerns?
Curious by nature and industrious by
character he always wanted to know
how everything works -- remember the kid
who disassembled clocks and radios
earning the righteously frustrated rage
of his parents? that's him. There is nothing
he hasn't applied himself to spurning in
the process taking 'courses' of any kind
simply putting his keen mind and skilled
hands to it, from constructing furniture
painting landscapes, remodelling bathrooms
and kitchens, laying tile, rebuilding conters
designing stained glass windows, producing 
and installing them, and building hardscapes
as a landscaper would in my garden. In
his working life a government bureaucrat
focus art and antiques, international trade
now retired over twenty years he's still at
it, plumbing, electrical work whatever
needs attending in this house, our home.

Judgement Call

Off-putting, aloof we found her, with an
irritating supercilious smile always hovering
on her lips, anxious to get on, and away
conveying to her sister, our neighbour her
irritation unwilling to linger. Other things on
her mind, more pressing concerns than to
waste time in idle talk. So much for initial
impressions, so much for interpreting signals.
Have we changed, or is it she who has
warmed so fundamentally to our presence
that we can scarce recognize the person we
once knew however slightly. Retired now
her practice and eponymous building sold 
to another dentist, she now is happily
devoted to walking her dog, her time her
own, that smile now genuine, her anxiety
relieved. Now it is we who cannot break
away as she unleashes a flood of impressions
experiences, likes, dislikes, revelations of
an intimate nature in a casual manner 
unburdening herself, casting caution to the 
winds. We listen, exchange, while the 
pleasantries evolve and revolve. So was her 
attitude one of aloofness -- or reserve? And 
was that smile one of shyness, the woman 
who now proudly gardens and taught herself 
to raise bees in her very own apiaries so 
she can fussily produce her own honey...

 

Picture This!

The narrow mountain road wound
through the fog and mist casting its
bewitched spell and caution in matched
measure around the slope then switchbacked
leading to the destination that memory
recalled insisting it be revisited to once
again view its ephemeral exposure to
nature's flights of geological fancy
magnificent and raw, powerful and
awe-inspiring its furious beauty once
again awaiting our presence. In pounding
rain we accessed the trail a modest
affectation of shelter provided by the
forest canopy stippling the mountainside.
A landscape luxuriantly strewn with
boulders shed by the mountain in its
timeless thrust from the earth's mantle
host to elderly shaggy-barked yellow
birch, pines and hemlock rising to meet
the sodden grey clouds leadng to its 
granite topped summit above the treeline 
as rain receded and the view of numberless
mountains much greater in height than 
this one marched into the distance, most
swaddled in snow taking our breath away.

The Circuit

They come and they go, familiar
and unfamiliar, there is never a shortage
for those that go are invariably and
forever reproduced and they venture
forth in their white-haired frailty
creatures that were once vibrant and
convinced they were meant to exist
forevermore, in their youth exuberant
and triumphant as they took their place
within the multitudes of the young
who knew the world was there for
them to explore and to exploit, to enjoy
and to forge their life out of the endless
choices extended to them, the newly
entrenched of the species. Now in the
public sphere following a lifetime of
free choice squandering the years in
spontaneous role-playing they wander
about, their eyes glazed with wonder
and uncertainty, unsettled and confused
bemused and upset that their time is
drawing to the close they never imagined
would be theirs as it was their elders'.

 

Mountain Lake

The lake sits wide and tranquil at
the foot of the mountain where the 
endless stream washing down from
slopes nourish its swelling capacity
from inlet to expanding end nudging
aside the forest creating a swampy 
wetland. The crystal green lake
shimmers in the cloud-bobbled
blue of the sky reflecting the soft
white of the clouds, their blue haven
and the vast green screen of the forest
old pines, hemlock, yellow birch 
and maple casting their sentried
forms to achieve great heights
underscored by the understory of
dogwood, moose maple and ostrich
ferns. Wind ripples the lake's surface
catching diamond points of sun-glitter
as a loon surfaces, dives, resurfaces
and calls its shrill territorial imperative.

Hauteur vs Generosity 

of Spirit

What an odd phenomenon is the
social culture of a political movement
colouring the social contract between
people and ideology giving character
to the amorphous mass that is a given
society priding their superior values
in a civil covenant distinguishing their
view of self and of others in the classic 
entitled 'us' and the backward 'them'. 
Take, for example, those committed to
the core values of progressivism
heralding themselves as liberals
expounding universalities and freedom
but whose trenchant hostilities toward
the great social unwashed of deep
conservatism drips with acid contempt.
While those they decry value nation
and liberty, civil manners and hard work
alongside appreciation of history and
heritage -- open-minded and courteous
overlooking the curt dismissiveness
of the factions that accuse them, a  
model of rational debate and defence
of hard-won respect and tolerance
knee-capped by the left. Examples
abound of self-celebrated liberalism
those progressives with their social 
culture of hostility as opposed to their
neighbours with their self-regulating
conservatism in a laid-back social culture
of inclusiveness and warmth to share.

 

Forest Interior

It is a breathing, growing and
glowing emerald world awakening
a primal memory and an arcane
nurturing need inviting entry to the
known unknown. The reassuring
mass of the forested domain
suddenly reveals a dark interior
sinister in its appetite to extinguish
the glow of daylight despite the
persistence of rays of sunlight
penetrating the forest canopy.
Shafts illuminating the gloom
of the interior leaving discrete
and movable patches of
brightness lingering on bracken.
Creatures large and small fly
through thickets of trees or
scurry across the forest floor
as shadows lengthen and dark
intrudes to introduce nightfall.