Month: January 2006

Where Were Your Angels?

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Where Were Your Angels?
Where were your Angels
when predator pedophiles stalked your days,
your childhood a blur of fear and pain,
and The Secret withheld from those you blame
for not seeing or hearing your silent screams.
Where were your Angels
when cultural initiations of drugs and booze
made your youth a shadowed haze
of confusion, guilt, and ravaged dreams,
powers and potentials raped for others’ gain.
Where were your Angels
when you sold yourself with clever seductions
to buy a life of pleasures and pleasing
toys to quiet the ghostly screaming
when paralyzed memories returned again.
Do Angels protect, empower, and offer cures?
Were your Angels indifferent or just voyeurs?
Perhaps the Old-Man-God-of-the-Sky
and his Angels are just an ancient Myth or Lie
to help us feel ‘safe’ until we ‘die’.
Do we create these Beings we adore
to embrace the Human Race with a Magic Lore,
with prayers and petitions to implore
an ever judging and condemning God of War
and Predators we just can’t ignore.
August, 2005

The Sled Dog

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The Sled Dog
He was a weather-toughened, soldierly sled-dog
used to long, torturous runs
and the confusion of human hands and voices
unpredictably kind or harshly cruel
since the days he was a pup.
He pulled his heavy burdens of past and present
as if they were part of his own being,
part of his own thoughts and memories,
and as if the other dogs were merely
part of that burden to be endured.
He loved running
and the illusion of freedom it gave him.
He even almost loved the female he’d just mated with
but it left him feeling too vulnerable, too open,
as if exposing his underbelly
to hungry wolves and vicious dogs
sure to take advantage of any perceived weaknesses.
It was just too dangerous
to allow himself to love and trust her.
He’d known countless unspeakably painful betrayals
and savage attacks in his pup days,
and so surrounded his heart
with protective blocks of ice and rock.
If she dared try to penetrate that barrier,
he’d punish her with swift blows and surly snarls.
How he loved running
and the illusion of freedom it gave him!
June, 1992 revised April, 2004

The Dolphin

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The Dolphin
Shock and revulsion swept through him
in a swift, devastating wave
as he witnessed the intentional pollution
of waters essential to so many lives.
The dolphin struggled with his keen intelligence
to understand these strangest of sea-faring mammals.
They were curious, callous, and cruel,
these dominant killers of the aquatic world.
The pollution was everywhere!
He felt an overpowering sense of panic
and began to emit distress signals,
thrashing about in the fouled water.
Not knowing where to leap or dive,
his hopes slowly drowned in despair
of such arrogantly contemptuous destruction.
Polluted clouds formed from polluted waters
then marched with strong, polluted winds
to vent their raging, vengeful furies
on polluted sea and polluted land.
With them, the dolphin’s distress signals
echoed long unheeded warnings
of this insanely suicidal species
destroying the environment of their own world.
Listen…Do you hear him now?
March, 1992 revised May, 2004

The Bear

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The Bear
He stopped and sniffed invisible messages in the air,
recognizing the telltale signs of observing watchers.
Then he heard the betraying clicks of cameras
and human voices hushed in secretive whispers
mocking the power and dignity of his bearing.
Some chuckled at the nickname ‘Friar Tuck’.
The bear resented their intrusions into his forest
and the increasing thefts of his territorial possessions.
He shifted his tremendous weight onto weary hind legs
in laboured effort to lift himself to the height
of his most threatening stance,
forepaws clawing warnings—open-mouthed
to show the teeth of his fierce pride.
He was a massive, battle-scarred male—
a combat veteran of grizzly skirmishes
who preferred the gentler moments of his life
when, in harmony with the spirit of the land,
he foraged for the offerings of the seasons.
He continually fed the hungers
of his voracious appetites,
resourcefully adding to the measure of his fat.
Fat was the burdening measure of his efforts
to succeed in facing the wilderness
of unpredictable challenges
and the long-wintered state of dormant denning.
For a brief moment his memory drifted back
to first comforting awareness
of his devoted mother
and the secure closeness of her well-hidden den.
He remembered the initiating discoveries
and memorized lessons of cub learning,
the strict discipline of the protective she-bear.
Then came roaming independence
and the instinctive spirit
that habitually called him in autumn winds
to the solitary confines of his cloistered retreats.
It was calling him even now
to stop wrestling with the world
and respond to consciousness
beyond brute force and flesh.
Yes, he must obey that call.
He humbly lowered his heavy weight,
no longer desiring to contest
these arrogant, curious creatures
who now ruled and robbed the forest he so loved.
He slowly retreated,
aching in every joint of his old body,
and wondered if he’d ever awaken
to the miracle of another Spring.
March, 1992 revised May, 2004