Never Again

It speaks to the profound mystery of human
nature in all its idiosyncratic diversity
that while most seek to live in harmony
with others they are confounded in
their intention by unsought adversaries
who not only will not agree to allow them
peace, but intend to inflict death upon
those whom their hatred unerringly targets.
This is a hatred and a dispute of ancient
origins of desert tribal nomads challenging
one another for scarce resource advantage
taken in territorial claims abetted by
war and the eagerness to extract blood
to attain victory. Time has passed since
their historical feud but the victimhood
nursing the grievances of the pathological
haters keeps the embers of their inherited
death-delivering campaigns live and lethal.
Long aeons ago, yesterday, today and yet
tomorrow the archaic treasured homeland 
of Israel has faced campaigns of pillage
and extermination in a never-ending goal
to destroy security and haven for a long
oppressed people in a land where Jewish 
lives are held invulnerable to genocidal 
intent by those striving total destruction
met by the implacable resolve of the targets
to foil the intransigent intent of terrorists.

Forest Interior

All is silently serene as we navigate
our way through the forest trails
relaxed in the calm of its atmosphere
and conscious of the beauty of its
landscape. An inaudible sigh emanates
from the forest interior at our entry
and it is not ours but that of the many
curious eyes following our wandering
steps and wondering what our purpose
could possibly be, strangers for whom
this place is not home, but their very
own. The silence is broken by an aria
of penetrating lofty notes and a cardinal
alights nearby its crimson feathers lit
by those shafts of sunlight weaving
through the forest canopy. Where
there was no sound suddenly there
are chirping voices of chickadees and
nuthatches. A song sparrow brightens
the air with transcendent notes of airy
lightness. Then all is once again still.
Mice and voles, chipmunks and their
progeny, squirrels and snakes make no
sounds that reach our ears until a red
squirrel scolds our presence on this
balmy spring day. Woodpeckers thrum
in the distance and then once again silence.
Then the sound of a deeper voice in its
inimitable way the only one to ask of
us Hooo are you? An owl's self-assurance
whose presence all others are existentially
aware of. And as we exit the forest and
its exquisite heaving, thriving green
interior leaving all behind, it exhales.

Hello Yourself!

It's just the way things are; ease your
conscience you cannot be a source of
solace to all those lost souls seeking
validation of their very existence. There
is rapport or there is none. This  you tell
yourself as you gather your inner resources 
to cease communication when the time 
just seems right to be unresponsive with 
good cause. Online connections are a 
diversion an adjunct to a real life lived in
the here and now with direct interpersonal 
contact or ... not. The endless search by the 
emotionally vulnerable for human contact 
is a reality of life. That said among others 
the need is a cruder compulsion to haunt
to derive pleasure from imposing on others
to find a medium of control or a method
to exploit in that great free-for-all that is 
the Internet welcoming social misfits
deviants, those with a pressing political 
cause the ideologists looking for a home 
for their thoughts and mindful of the search
and you are one. That simple personal
note of 'Hello' invites response which
the incautious curious repeat only to find
a probing conversation best avoided in
its assumptions yet occasionally despite
intentions otherwise a familiarity develops
of ease and casual intent of friendship
denoting that elusive element of instant
recognition of comradeship in that alter
life that is life yet not quite an inner life.
Ideologues, egotists, stalkers begone.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest

The knowledgeable call them widow-makers
and for good reason, readily discernible
upon viewing their precarious perches
generally stout branches of hale trees
catching the tall dead trunks that suddenly
collapse onto neighbouring trees in the
thickness of a forest. Long-dead and rotting
steadily, wind, rain and seasons make their
mark and eventually the dead collapse
often becoming snagged like the one that
has been leaning over the trail we pass on 
a daily basis in our perambulations through
our neighbourhood forest. Picturesque in
the winter months piled high with snow and
standing out on the overhead landscape 
where all other trees are sturdily upright
while it remains perpendicular, its quite
considerable height stretching lengthily
from its stricken source to its perch, eroding
steadily in nature's inimitable cycling plan
of birth and renewal. Glad we were that we
missed the spectacle of its final decline
its mast splayed across and between other
trunks and over the trail. The sudden 'whomp'
of a falling tree is disorienting, difficult for
the strike-vulnerable to immediately discern
and react. Grateful we were to be absent in
yet another event where no one was about
and that warning sound remained unheard.

Israel: The Final Solution

Methodically, with painstaking effort
a great undertaking emerged whose
precise and detailed planning would
at long last rid the world of the presence
of a threat to world harmony, a threat
with multipronged manifestations certain
to destabilize civilization in its manifest
destiny to spread disease, control world
finance, maintain a firm grip on all
news circulating internationally the better
to manage its image and finances while
set on degrading cultures and values as it
reaped and raped resources. The machinery
of impeccably researched science meant
to identify the nature of the threat and its
perpetrators identified all who descended
from its genetic bank of attributes only 
they possessed. A superior authority finally
gathered these inferior people with their
malignant views of their superior station
to annihilate their ongoing threat to world
order and security. The success of this
plan of obliteration was undeniable for
six million of their kind perished, freeing
Europe from the bonds of their rapacious
presence. One might think that those who
escaped that Final Solution might react by
hesitating to bring attention to their continued
presence, not brazenly mourn their dead
holding accountable an ideology of hatred
and deploring a world conscience that did
nothing to defend them, but no. In their 
audacious intransigence they congregated
upon their heritage lands to renew their
contract with an almighty power and there
defend themselves amidst a renewal of
the international accusations of cupidity
militarism and plans of universal conquest.

In Summation

Despite the cold and the snow flurries
persisting in the atmosphere we know
that calendar spring has arrived and
await reassurance that the biosphere
of our local geography has lapsed
from winter to spring so we intensify
the search for signals of that arrival
and are rewarded by the first signs of
the forest floor thawing and thrusting
wild strawberries appear. Overhead a
wild cacophony of geese as their
formation glides over the forest canopy.
In the snowmelt-swollen creek of the
ravine two drakes battle for the affection
of a Mallard duck. In the underbrush
snakes seeking sun writhe in an ecstasy
of copulation, oblivious of our presence.
Seen are the squirrels bolting here and
there, and under a copse of spruce their
cones arrayed neatly revealed by the
receded snowpack. Raccoons are unseen
other than their presence on our porch
daintily gathering nuts, seeds and kibble.
All this in a week of daily forays into
the forest observing and today's sun
brought out the final reassurance with
the appearance of a Mourning Cloak
the longed-for rites of spring at last.

The City of David

From time immemorial was it ever thus
that heritage and blood marked the ancient
Judean capital and that which was once
Judea is now Israel the grieved land of Zion
where a union of tribes once vanquished for
their pride and resistance to conquest formed
a vast diaspora in lands other than their own
where their presence was at times tolerated
yet time and again persecution and bloodshed
fated them to languish and weep for a long
awaited salvation to join their brethren in
the holy land rightfully theirs to hold and
to keep. A land once sacred and fertile
its ancient history storied and studied
its guiding influence shaping the world to
come. Just as the timeless invasive stories
of challenge and defence once roiled the
Semites of Judea they continue to contest
the origins, authenticity and legitimacy of
Israel reborn. This time finding a people 
well versed in adversity over the aeons with
its established culture of self defence and its
ongoing intention to remain, the Wandering
Jew of history replaced by a prepared and
adamant presence of absolute permanence.