193. Victoria Park, July

Darren P. (Oct 12, 2013)

https://es.foursquare.com/v/victoria-park/4bdda1c00ee3a593bafd2db0

your eyes

glow gold

in the summer

sunshine

your smile

as warm as

Canadian

midsummer

can be

by the river

watching

swans and

children

play

time so

slow

and the

air so

sweet

even then

I’m not sure

I realized the beauty of

such a moment

simple,

wondrous

as you are

as we are

gold glints

shining in summer

sunbeams,

beaming

brilliant

March 21, 2020

Montréal, QC

188. harbour dining

August:
and the seagulls
circle

smiling ship-sails
rest their
contented wings

scavenging above the
sapphire-strewn
surface,
cackling, boasting,
gossiping

children shriek
and call their
hungry
friends,
beckoning with strips of partly-eaten
lettuce from
lunch's ham
sandwich

sparkled concrete
blazes my
heat-soaked
toes;

gulls comingle with
assuming toddlers,
planes take-off of
life off,
unseeing

glistening, the water
hums and
whirs,
silver sapphire
in the
waning
sun.

July 3, 2018
Waterloo, ON

171. The Opportunist

American Robin at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park

San Dimas, Southern California

Image Source: Two Birders To Go

Noble:
red head
raised high,

the robin
bounces
steadily, beady
eyes glimmering
with the
spring rain

in such splendour,
lone on the
beaming emerald
do I notice:

Stringy worms
dangling from
its resurfaced
beak;
munching, it is
a mortal like any other;
the rain,
fortuitous

Cantopop sails
in from the adjacent
living room;
eyelids painted and
eyes scrunched in
synchronous exertion:
dolled-up girls
and girly
boys

Things
seem not so
cheap
anymore…

147. Little Litany

Little unborn
fetus,
peeking through the
window of a
burrowed
egg:

Sympathetic arteries
trail to and
from your
thumping
body

So exposed, so
fragile: your heart is
beating; it is
a tiny
miracle –
a strange thing
to see such
inner workings
crudely
revealed

We are
injecting you with
strange
fluids,
failing to
explant
you

We have
mangled the
yolk and
you are blurred
in
the aftermath;

Upon rediscovery
you are
hovering,
heartbeats
faltering

I am so
sorry

I say, over and
over as
you fade, as your
heart
stills

Poor little
chicken embryo,
I am so
sorry;

We are discarding you into
a plastic
bucket
used for
cherry
picking some
summers
ago

I would like to
say a
prayer for your
unborn
soul

But I am not
religious, and we
are surrounded by
uncommon
melancholy

Or I am,
as the others leave and
discuss their
weekend plans

I am left,
devastated – for
what?

The sacrilege of a
stifled life,
dissected and
discarded

I am haunted,
and I am
so,
so
sorry.

143. The Sublime

From: Jan Axel's Blog

swarm of vultures,
high in the afternoon
sun;
slow and circular,
like a baby’s
mobile, suspended in morbid
listlessness above the
Florida
flats:

restless,
tension hovers in the
unoccupied molecules
buzzing between the
unfashionably active
fat mosquitoes;

boxed-up fish suppliers and
phony Chinese restaurants;
ghetto Black-men at the
7-11:
tank-top children in the
avenues and
dried-up yellowed
grass
roasting in the
sunburnt air.

138. Coal Workers

Easy to
regard dirtied
blue-collar workers
with a wry
eye –
there is certainly
something
that makes us
special,
protected:

Clothed in warm
furs,
Tchaikovsky
flitting between our ears
via iPods,
iPads –

After a fall,
we pick ourselves
up late at night,
completely vulnerable;

we
realize:
this is life,
happy or
less so,
it carries on in its
drab
shades…

Forced to confront the
reality of our condition,
the frigid weather,
the boring country and its
resolute permanence

We look at ourselves
and the grey walls and
wonder, how much is
delusion?

How many escapist
stories have we told
ourselves to escape
these
cold winters,
dry summers?

The geese flee
and return
as we ponder these
Grecian thoughts,
not insensitive
nor enlightened;
but better off that
way,
perhaps.

135. Blackbirds at Noon

Blackbirds at noon,
feeding on the lawn
and in the fields.

Stragglers rest
upon the prickly, bare
branches, swaying
in the biting breeze:

As one by one,
they join the others,
there is always the
one
resting
solitary
in the
trees

Explain to me,
how even among these
mundane
creatures
there are
poets, staring at the
mid-day
sun,
pondering the
infiniteness of
the world

Else,
it is my
ridiculous
anthropomorphic
personification,
projected upon
unassuming
subjects

He is simply tired
from a day’s
flight;
full from the
last meal;
He joins them,
all the same,
in due time.

And I am left here,
watching,
until by some fluke,
they all steal away,
black ribbons on a
stony sky

and I remain,
wondering if it is
foolish to be
too
pensive

104. Alcina’s picnic

Crows are eating in the backyard,
congregating under the shady
trees:

Dark and plotting, hunched over in the
shadows,
whispering…

Reflecting on a former mortal
existence,
bemoaning the trappings of
enchantment.

Chatter subsides to feeding,
mechanic bobs
puncture the sheltered
earth:

Noontime ends, and all the
inmates part,
save the stragglers, digging
past the noon.

Even these few gluttonous
ones depart,
and there are only worms
and yellow butterflies,
and all the other innumerable
insects, left climbing on
the windswept
grass.

87. Striped in Sunlight

Striped in sunlight,
half-awakened from a dreamless sleep,
I have entered another world:
sun feels warm on my naked
legs,
oxygen soft and
still.
Birds are tittering lazily;
I don’t know what they’re saying
either:
children are playing in the park near-
by;

and I am here,
listening to the cars go
by.
There is such a sense of
“now”,
but it is sad also,
knowing such instances
will be remembered forever,
though never occur the same way
twice –

82. Crows and the Dandelions

Two crows amongst the yellow flames;
the sun of May ignites their black:
I am mystified.

Oft I have seen such beauty,
as the dandelions peek their ready heads
above the warming
Earth:

as the dandelions grow, and live, and die,
and when at last their heads
grow old, bequeath their silken seeds
to summer days
to air, to chubby hands of
wobbling tots

and as the crows pick worms beside the
dying weeds,
so I grow older, suns continue in their
traversal ‘cross the
skies:

yet -
I am part of these
eternal rhythms,
a part of this lovely and
ephemeral world,
beginning on uncertain paths
as a fluff of dandelion seed,
having brief moments to
fly, and land, and live, and die;
but long enough to feel the air
& see the open sky.

72. Early bird

Photons underwhelm me;
I am inundated
and wake silently.
It is a slow, effortful awakening,
as if it will be my last.

It is quiet in the house;
the babies are still asleep.
I did not dream last night;
my head is wrung dry of
thought.

Sounds materialize from beyond my
window –
I have risen with the birds.
I do not believe I have ever
waken early enough,
while an adolescent sun is still
starting to dawn
and the robins are courting
in the dewy
trees.

The blinds draw sleepy stripes
across my back as I
turn;
I would like to listen to these
creatures for a while.

There is such a primal
sense of nostalgia,
of melancholy,
as their songs fade away
and morning begins.

Why do the birds stop singing?
A few precious notes are caught
by the scant
daylight and left to glitter on the buttercups
as the prima donnas’
exclusive contract ends and all the little
divas shoo their divos
back into nests and become once again
ordinary little songbirds;

until the next day, and day
after,
when I will no longer hear them,
until their voices one day
shut up in their throats
and not even the early
riser
can ever hear them sing
again.

54. Breakfast Time

Silly things!
Scurrying ‘round in flocks of 2 or 3,
picking at the scraps:
French toast doesn’t remain
on the ground for long!

I can tell the females are
greyish; males maybe brighter brown.
I’m no ornithologist;
I can appreciate a good little bird
though;
these little things are
little wonders,
aren’t they!

Look: this one has a
pink Fruit Loop
stuck round its beak:
if Kellogg knew how convenient
these were for the little birdies,
they would be proud –

How well they fit, like wreaths
around their beaks;
how well they fit down their little throats!
I don’t know if I should be mad,
losing bits of food to them,
or if I should be amused at their excitement, their sugar high;
or just to sit in peace,
regarding them
with such a
watchful eye!

"...daintily picking up a Cheerio..."
Photograph by Kelly Riccetti

Source: Red and the Peanut

35. So sang the silence

Photograph By: Christian Hanner

Arrested in the sun –
as photons stripe your wings:
could death be lovelier?
Unseeing eyes ablaze,
as if too undeserved
of such a masterwork.
Upon a tender branch,
the paragon of dawn:
did one such mulberry
obstruct your jeweled throat
upon the blinding sight
of lethal loveliness?;
so as you gasped, it struck –
so swiftly, fatally?
In serving such an art,
an art oneself becomes –
in still serenity
entombed in oxygen:
the sentinel of Truth
remains forever mute –