Growing Up

The war was on
I was told
when I was very young
others were very old
and seemed to tell the lie
friends most wanted to hear
and busily drank clear tea or rye.

Spring came as I’d hoped it would
as the time from Christmas to Easter
was too great to be understood.
With longer days a particular stomp
on milk glass hard paths
gave a rewarding clomp
as overnight the snow beneath
had left to go who knew where
like my Dad
but I was there.

For company I was free to choose
between women with Sweet Caps stink or
little kids with Savage shoes.
I thought that was the way it had to be
that adults had come from someplace
as maybe they had once been young you see.
I figured growing up had happened to them that
Time would pass and it would happen to me.

Spring Rain

Fine drops combine
cacophony seeking meaning
among the different tuned timbres
Nature’s notes
playing with the inner ear

The rapid rushing patter
of quick wee drops
collecting upon slippery new green
anonymously denotes
Nature’s music
and a random parchment plonk

Dollops heard high on the leafy roof
a contrapuntal plop
midst the irregular pap dabs
from forest floor
Nature’s message
Quite clearly

Calm
Relax
Enjoy
This
is
an all day rain

It Is What It Is

The steppes are to come from
The Asian lowlands are to grow rice in
The prairies are to run trains on
They all serve.

But in Oz
man works for the land.
It was always there
and bade the first poor buggers to have a go.
It is there now and with a strong quiet voice says
All come, Step right up, Buy a plot
Work it and hope
you stand a chance
to get your shade but never forget
bloody toil earns you the right
only to call it yours.

Have a care
it allows you to dream
but it’s not going anywhere.
It supports the ancient gums
and after they fall
it tolerates their carcass
waiting in patient silence
for the next plant
or animal.

Take your turn.

Awe

If there is
no God
and never was
it must hold
we are a joke
partly told
passed on
as the ages unfold.

We are living proof
of the survival of the fittest
or the most dust adaptable
begging the punch line.

Understand Awe.

Renting from Eternity

My
Soul
may not be mine
nor anyone else’s
but belongs to eternity
resting
in this temple
while needed

Before
memory
I have wondered
who and where and why
and felt a need to know
as urgent as the obligation
to place a stick between
the teeth of an active epileptic

Now
I begin to understand
and become
more relaxed and realize the realizer
is but a building
housing the soul
responsible only
for this life time

Later
someone else
will shelter
the precious ember
and marvel and wonder
and if they are very fortunate
they will enjoy the morsel of eternity
that they are while they are

Then
having provided nourishment and shelter
and received due benefit
they will relinquish the temporal contents
happy in the belief that
while they were custodian
no harm
was done

Lessons

When I was young
I knew most older people suffered
from the accelerated day syndrome.
Now it seems it should be called the accelerated hour syndrome.

I feared I’d never catch it
but now I try to understand
this business of acceleration as
knowledge is good
and sometimes useful.

Stimulation seems
to rush at you
increasingly accelerating.
It must be the birthday parties
that are doing it.

Haunted still by the flat featureless
dread in youth, understanding
might help the collation of an era
and lend topography
to an often bleak scene.

From a firm foundation
might emerge a solid
understanding
for a current lexicon
useful in dealing with everydayness.

Absorbing life’s lessons
who knows what meaningful markers might emerge
leading understanding
to be celebrated into
a navigational system.

It could be beneficial
to employ this understanding
to better cope with the future and finally
it might be interesting
to peer over the edge.

Ultimately you
think about dying.
There is the part about leaving
about pain and anguish but
nasty can largely be managed.
The main problem
is about the leaving.
You will no longer enjoy new information and
you don’t get to see
how things turn out.

Too Bad, Ernie

Maple Mountain
is a snow covered hill
1971 feet high
and is said to be
the highest elevation in Ontario.
Close to the Eastern summit
there is the dried and frozen carcass
of an oyster.
No one has explained
what the parking meter
was seeking at that altitude.

The Brodeur Peninsula

Time
heavy and awkward
encumbered
more than an untended garden
shrugs
inexorably moving
aware
that in the long run
very little lasts.

Time
sometimes sleek
sliding from there
to here and beyond.
It is so unusual
in this guise
that one could be forgiven
for failing
to comprehend its beauty.

As an aide to knowing this format understand
that now need not be borne by
towers chimneys noise and smog
but by tender short grass
wafting in the corridor
between July ice
and loose rock at cliffs base.
This verdant carpet covers boulders and bone
arranged in a nearly circular shape.

The squinted minds eye sees
a returning hunter
carrying his kayak
above the waters edge
crawling into his bone-beamed dwelling
to welcome warmth and laughter.
At the floe edge an old woman
leads the family in thanks
for the safe return and the bounty.

The chanted drone
ascends the rich rust cathedral cliffs
and strives out across the ice
seeking the Brodeur Peninsula.

In awe
you stand midst the ancient rocks
bearing a silence so strong
your pulsing blood can be heard.
You mumble
and wonder.

Your brother asks,
What eyes have seen this sight;
What thoughts have lived here?
His voice speaks not in contemporary time
over five feet of tundra but bounces back
with sonar clarity unhindered by eons.

You are in the presence of sleek immutable time
and you are grateful
for the purity of the experience as
you are there
and wonderfully
they are here.

Who Knows

What colour will my walker be
Will it be a shade
my father and his father
never knew
Will it be Caribbean blue

Will it be a defiant red
for use ’til I fall down
Will it be rich deep plum
Regal as a formal gown
Will it be like summer’s end
fresh mown sweet and brown

Will it be flannelly conventional
like a suit of grey
Will it be proper
like polished Balmorals shining black
Will it be an institutional shade
Of milk sopped mint
Will it be hospital beige
from an industrial painter’s palette

Will it be a ruby claret
to remind of memories unachieved and undone
Will it shine fresh as the seasons
always BRG in the constant summer sun
Will it be a joyous yellow glinting hard
like a golden sunlit shard
Will it be green grime
greyed by time

All these are colours of mine
It depends, it all depends

Skin

Yesterday the dog was walked
        the mail was collected
        the shopping was done
        a nap achieved.

  Later the dog was fed, supper made
        and a dreadful doc was watched on
        unsettling tactics and torture
        employed by the saviours of democracy.

  Then the ’phone rang and unfortunately
        no nice young person is available
        to take the all night shift
        I show up.

  Soon the clock discloses
        little innocent hours
        a computer card game is turned on
        a deli snack is set out
        seconds sleaze by.

   All  of an electric sudden a shock
        sends me back to days of skin so soft
        to supple-loined clasps and comfort
        to seconds lust-lengthened to loving hours
        and the hair at the back of my neck shivers.

    An   urgent glance
        the fingers feverish pad discloses
        the sensory sender softly searching cellophane
        finding only extra thin slices of Hungarian salami.
        Recoiling in embarrassment it admits
        an incorrect transmission.
        Not skin, not cellophane, but memory

        Ciao Bella

© Richard Clare Moss 2006