Strange

Strange how the choices we make do not seem to be choices at all. There is a craft in our sense of development, where leaving things alone will transform a situation, and acting on an impulse will stagnate our hopes. There does not seem to be a balance, only a cosmic humour, toying with our will.

Frenzied fighting freshens
Fear and freedom recoil,
Stirring dreams unrealized into
Pandering.

Crazed remembering
Where no thoughts dwell
Only the feel of a
Forgotten fish
Or stink of recalcitrance
Slither into our possessive
Deliverance.

Breath, lightly, breathe well
Breadth and depth of
Singularity –
There is not a chance
There is change
There is. There is not.
Where is the duck pond?

Can it really exist, or is it just a place
Where I will never go?

Feeding wild ducks seems
Beyond my comprehension.
Weeping willows
Drip
Endless tendrils
Creeping onto my
Memories of mother.

She adored that idea
Left me , wondering why.

And there he stays
Leaping, flapping near that pond
Into a world of
Family and brave assertion.

A broken name
A bereaved heart
But still he chooses that
Betrayal
Needs the comfort of
Regeneration, of a child’s world
To nurture them
To rear himself.

I am only a mirror of his
Luxurious mind.
So he can see himself
So he can be.

He can share nothing
That we are not creating
And there is the flailing truth.
One day
The globe will spin, and I will
Fly away.

That ugly duckling without
A pithy pond.

There will be no musing,
Lose
Elude, escape
and soar.
Instead of feathery caresses
And flight, sight into new dimensions
He will only have the drooping
Strands, stranding
Only hair
Red drippings
To wrap up his thoughts
To tie them up
To keep them in his secret world
Where they will remain
Curled into a reflection
That he can look into
At that stagnant pond.

And mother will say,
To him from some hymn
He will hear
‘Give me some seed
To feed
The ducks.’
And there will be none.

Just the sound of quackery.

August Webs

Without being told, I know that the month of August is present when the spiders' silk fills the open eastern window. I watch the fine filament tracing the outline of the aperture asymmetrically, creating the mystery of a web. Traversing the space with steadfast strands of precision, the creature and many like it begin a place to lay their offspring every August. The August webs are more striking, whiter, more luminescent. They glitter with dew in the early dawn, and glimmer through the daylight hours, radiate with the moonlight. I look out the kitchen window, admiring the spider spin and I know August has begun.

At one time I thought that the webs caught the spirit of midsummer, hovering and distinct from each other in their design, a splendid metaphor for catching the bounty of summer's thoughts, the web of fulfillment, the intricacies of life's peculiarities ordered into a useful mode of expression. Now I just envy the spider's relentless power to know what and when to produce - its life's oeuvre. Driven to make what is required to fulfill its destiny, the web is profound sanctity, the embodiment of spiders' purpose in nature. Doing is knowing.

Oh, for a web to weave.
Not to practice to deceive
Place me in the azure sky
Let me know what to defy
this lifetime.

Here's acknowledging Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)
"Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive."