There are some mornings
When I look at you asleep
And know,
In fact,
That you are not,
But thinking through
Those steps and plans
That occupy your resting state
Before you have to face the day,
Propelling into action
All and more there is to do,
All and more that must be done.

Do know I so admire the tenacity
You hold, the way you navigate
The shoals of life’s narrow seaway
Through salty straights and tidal floes,
Your own pilot
Keeping faith
with the hand-drawn chart
of the diary on the notice board.

Dearest, I am lost at sea,
My small boat sail-less,
Drifting, turning this way and that.
As you rose from our bed
That hand you placed
On my shoulder seemed
For the briefest moment
A tweek on the rudder.
Brought into the wind
And before the canvas fills,
There was a moment’s calm
A second’s rest.

Down off the beach
The women wear gold and white dresses
Worlds of pearl and crystal glassed slpendor

I can get there in twenty minutes on the motorcycle
If she starts

But what a night it will be
If I make enough to buy liquor
Or a blue night home

The moon peaks just up above the sable palms
The night is warm and brimming with stars
The smell of gasoline and wind full of ocean salt
Where my home is by the sand
Blown into my heart
And no matter how I shake it
Or try to hose it off
The salt remains crusted
The smell of sea and home

Up town to mainstreet
Where little Cuban joints
Like to keep the neon glow
Where drunken black boys
Smoke *** in the yard
girls sit cross legged on the roof
Of squat sea blown houses
Painted pink, and blue and white
Like Miami hotel lobbies


The spedometer is broken
Just a haunting yellow glow
As onto Seaway I turn
More sea than road
God put this road here for me
Right here on a warm night
Where I can speed by the brilliant
Candle lit yards and dull sidewalk lamplight
The smell is strong of sea there
Heavy on the sky
The moon is a yellow crescent
Up above the ocean black
But the bike shifts clean and quiet
And the yacht clubs up the road
Are Shining bright
Where
Pretty girls dance
Red lipped in yellow lights

She surrenders her joys
A-line highway what ploys
Per- day 2 B or not to Be
  B for breakaway
Windy- seaway everyday
endless living
Stay to the right tossing skirt


Gossip throwing unwanted dirt
Smoky bear mountain no harm
  Losing one valuable gift charm
   His name in honor
   feeling complete
  Highway for justice and absolute
   The right way

    Aroma apple pie putting on
       Your husbands
      Graphic artist highway- tie
      How many people on the highway

       Never to confess and lie
      Highway doesn't have any privacy
True saint of shrubbery mountain tops
       curved figure highways
    Reckless cliffs skirt ruffles love
      feeling rammed
       Turn of the century traffic jammed
  Your skirt flew up like wild goose chase

  You rather of went Big- City marathon
    bike race
By- way time -may be- silent have
nothing to say?
Performance piano Steinway
Skirt highway waving flag winning everyday*
Your skirt drenched rooftop concerts

Nest of Blue Jays no highway
Serenity sky draw the deviant
But words can heal even on a highway
My lips are sealed?

I awaken to the lonliest sound
Heard on the Seaway:
The plaintiff fog horn,
One continuous, wayward hooooom.
Again, it sounds travelling
Across water dunes to another
Holy town, lights blinking.

J.W. left a brochure;
They knocked on a locked door.
The rain erupts on my deck boards;
There's dog droppings on my lawn;
Birds are singing in the morn,
And I open my door.

Imagine, a new by-law prohibiting
Backyard rinks;
There are no icicles,
No tongues extended palate-like;
No salt lines on my boots;
And I haven't seen a one horse sleigh
Or heard harness bells.
The North Pole and Santa have been exposed.
I have a Christmas wish,
And I'm ready to use it.

She is there at the water’s edge
Most any day she can wheedle and whine her mother to the water,
From the intermittent teasing warmth of late March
And all through the languid North Country summer
Until such time she is there,
Mitten-clad and scarf-wrapped like some miniature Tut,
Bracing against January’s razor-blade winds in those last few days
Until the few gurgling rills and streamlets are nothing but ice
All the way up to the big river in Ogdensburg.
She scrambles down to the bridge abutment
Hard by the Riverside Cemetery
Dropping a Popsicle-stick craft
(Its sails snips of cloth or bits of green-bar paper,
Its cargo a message stapled into a sandwich bag)
Into the river, sent on its way
With a brief and whispered benediction.
Most times, the craft founders almost immediately,
Taken under by a sudden gust of wind or large stick
Perhaps a carelessly tossed forty-ounce Hamm’s empty,
But on occasion the boat will stay upright and precariously totter along
Until it slips out of sight past the bend near the hospital,
And she claps her hands, convinced that yet another one
Is on its way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the great blue ocean.
An onlooker might cluck and shake his head,
And tell her that such a toy
Would never make it outside the village limits,
Certainly never past the big bridge on Route 58 at Elmdale
Or the one further on up past Pope Mills,
Let alone to the Seaway,
But he might check himself, perhaps sensing
That there had been disenchantment
For one life already,
So he might instead make gentle inquiries
As to what messages are carried in the plastic baggies.
She would (her voice all mock-sterness though the eyes betray her)
Answer simply That is between me and the angelfish.

Every time I leave,

A piece of me dissolves into the sea

seething and reeling with a passion

reserved for crowded rooms and swollen hearts


Every time I leave,

my blood runs hot and my breath heaves

heavy toward the jetty

deeming whats unseen not what it seems


I want to lift you up,

over ivy vines and walls of love

but I can't lift what is above

flying with doves and clouded gray


So lift me up from the ground

and brush the sleep from my eyes

to see the skies, I just want to see the sky


Every time I weep

an accused man goes free

from the bars and moving cars

that rub shoulders in the city street


Every time I weep

a demon loses wings

and has to walk among the things

he fears more than my tears


I want to lift you up

but what can I do from where I stand

when I can offer you my hand

I'll lay down with you there


So lift me up from the ground

and brush the sleep from my eyes

to see the skies, I just want to see the sky


Every time you smile

I look back on all the miles

I've put between us, all the while

thinking I need an island of my own


Every time you smile

A thousand sinners are forgiven

and the winter within seems less cold

than all the ice I've had to hold


So lift me up from the ground

and brush the sleep from my eyes

to see the skies, I just want to see the sky

"this is what is
going to send us
all
over
the
edge!"

somebody's worried
about falling into
the saint laurence seaway
and i'm worried about
falling into a waterfall just
past the edge of the blade

(all the money in the
world could probably
buy me my peace of mind
but it couldn't buy me
happiness and it
would leave everyone
else in the world
without any money)

and this life
my friends
is what is going
to send us all
over
the edge.

s m o t h e r
me in fresh snow
m u f f l e d
through notes to self
s c r i b b l e d
on scraps of paper to
a p p o i n t m e n t s
i never met

and call the
weekend a stanza

just one stanza in a
poem of months and time

(to be one person and
lost is not much to
the world but it is one
person's entire world to be lost)

break my back
split my heels
**** winter
except don't because
i like winter i just
want something
anything
to curse at

blame my
mood on

scuff my
cash on
knit my
apron on
***** my lid
on so tight

that someday
i'll explode

this is what is
going to send us
all over
the edge

*(i don't live
in a vacuum
but neither
do you)

I chose titled topic by a fanciful whim,
nevertheless still consider my knowledge
of aforementioned material slim.

Housing multivarious biomes
register ecological syndromes
whereby constituents of NOAA
Great Lakes Environmental
Research Laboratory writ tomes.

Pellucid pearls in northeastern
North America since planetary birth
Comprise Lakes Superior, Michigan,
Huron, Erie, and Ontario dearth
Largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth
Straddle Canadian–United States border

tethering partial global girth
Constituting 21% of world's surface
freshwater species hearth
Total surface equals 94,250 square miles
And total volume equals 5,439
cubic miles immeasurable worth.

Lake Erie from Erie tribe, abridged form
of Iroquoian word erielhonan “long tail”
Lake Huron named by French explorers for
Wyandot or “Hurons” whence they did sail
Lake Michigan likely from Ojibwa word
mishigami “great water” aka outsize gold quail

Lake Ontario i.e. “Lake of Shining Waters”
shimmering like hammered coat of mail
Lake Superior coined from French “lac supérieur”
"upper lake", an emerald watery dale
Ojibwe people called it gitchigumi medicinal
to cure that, which might ail.

These five lakes each reside in separate basin
Form a single, naturally interconnected body
of fresh water caisson
Linking east-central interior of North America
to Atlantic Ocean akin to an escutcheon.

From interior to outlet at St. Lawrence River,
Water flows via Superior to Michigan-Huron
southward to Erie to avoid a shiver
Finally released northward to Lake Ontario
as like a well taut archer with his quiver.

The lakes drain a large watershed via many
rivers as an Olympic team
Populated with approximately 35,000 islands
this estimate not x stream.

The Great Lakes region contains many
thousands of smaller lakes,
Often called inland lakes undulating in
delving, cascading and brimming
analogous to a fluid ream
Lake Michigan the only one located
entirely within United States
While the others border between United States
and Canada – essentially a liquid seam.

Lakes Michigan and Huron
are basically a single lake,
Sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron,
combined doth make
Total area of 45,300 square miles (117,000 km2)
Have the same surface elevation of 577 feet (176 m),
Connected by 295-foot deep Straits of
Mackinac Islands splayed like a rake.

Approximately 35,000 islands
extant throughout oceanic like sea
Largest among them
Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron
brushing up against Goliath knee.

The second-largest island is Isle Royale in
Lake Superior to boot
Both these islands
contain multiple lakes themselves
alive with creatures that hoot.

Unadulterated details gleaned courtesy
Mister Google, which website
buried under virtual sediment:

The Saint Lawrence Seaway
and Great Lakes Waterway connect
the Great Lakes to ocean-going vessels.

The move to wider ocean-going container ships —
which do not fit through the locks on these routes —
has limited container shipping on the lakes.

Most Great Lakes trade constitutes bulk material
and bulk freighters of Seawaymax-size
or less can move throughout
the entire lakes and out to the Atlantic.

The Great Lakes also connected
to the Gulf of Mexico
by way of the Illinois River
(from the Chicago River)
and the Mississippi River.

An alternate track is via the Illinois River
(from Chicago), to the Mississippi,
up the Ohio, and then
through the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
(combination of a series
of rivers and lakes and canals),
to Mobile Bay and the Gulf.

Commercial tug-and-barge traffic
on these waterways quite heavy.

Pleasure boats can also enter or exit
the Great Lakes by way of
the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York.

The Erie Canal connects to the Great Lakes
at the east end of Lake Erie
(at Buffalo, New York)
and at the south side of Lake Ontario
(at Oswego, New York).

The Great Lakes contain 21%
of the world’s fresh surface water:
5,472 cubic miles (22,810 km3),
or 6.0×1015 U.S. gallons (2.3×1016 liters).

This equals enough water
to cover the 48 contiguous U.S. states
to a uniform depth of 9.5 feet (2.9 m).

Although the lakes contain
a large percentage of the world's fresh water,
the Great Lakes supply only a small portion
of U.S. drinking water
on a national basis (roughly 4.2%).

Winter 2009–10 ranked somewhat mild,
the precipitation was below normal
for the Great Lakes Basin.

Mean lake levels then thought
to be slightly below
or at their levels of 2009.

An ice jam in February 2010
dropped the level in Lake St. Clair.

Since the jam got removed the level
has come back to its average.

As of March 2010, the lakes
were at the level, or slightly below,
where they were in March 2009.

The combined surface area
of the lakes equals approximately
94,250 square miles (244,100 km2)—
nearly the same size as the United Kingdom,
and larger than the U.S. states of New York,
New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, Vermont,
and New Hampshire combined.

The Great Lakes coast measures
approximately 10,500 miles (16,900 km);
however, the length of a coastline  
impossible mission to measure exactly
cuz topographical feature not well-defined.

This place we now find ourselves in, in history, where Human aggression is recognized as being a universal paramount in the fight for global survival..

Where in the face of Russian warmongering and charging Chinese military expansionism?
Where in the uncertainty of the volatility and utterly predictable intentions of second string nuclear nations, such as North Korea, Israel, India , Pakistan, South Africa and, soon, Iran, there can be no promise of security from the possibility of spontaneous outbreak of nuclear hostilities.?
Where the USA, because of the trajectories of its diabolical, episodic electoral swings, In that every four years the political spectrum and its spinning wheel of alliances and militaristic articulations change to render the nation as predictably unreliable militarily and, essentially, heading towards being a potential fortress unto itself?
Where nuclear NATO and Europe wallow in a quagmire of indecision and bickering between themselves rendering them, collectively, insignificant?
Where emergent South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and several South American nations are currently being backed into a position where they are being forced to militarize, to join the nuclear club for their own survival?
Where the Jihadists will ultimately procure and utilize a nuclear device in the most spectacular manner possible….to further their own ends?

There have been 106 major wars fought since 1945. Many of them brushfire wars between populations within a single or neighboring nation, the like of which are still being fought in countries such as Nigeria, the Congo, Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan and Yemen. Wars where people are being brutalized, dispossessed, killed and *****, daily. Where thousands are made refugees having to abandon their homes, their lives and their families in the face of brute force and extreme violence. Wars which are completely ignored by much of the rest of the world. Ignored because they don’t touch the comfortable normality of everyday life, the harmony of an existence without the threat of violent death by marauding gunmen or suicide vest explosives.

We in peaceful corners of the world live in a fool’s paradise because the threat of sudden widespread thermonuclear war has never been so immanent, so poised to erupt, since that of the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 where Kennedy and Khrushchev were within a hairs breadth of unleashing nuclear armageddon on the world. Sanity prevailed then, a compromise was reached where nuclear armaments were mutually removed from Poland and Cuba and the world entered the phase of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). An insanity which berthed the age of Détente.

And so it has been till now. A balancing act where nuclear nations tip toed around each other stretching the limits of confrontation without actually trespassing to the threshold.

Putin has passed the threshold with his extended invasion of Ukraine, He had the opportunity of freezing hostilities and retaining Donbas and the Crimean peninsula for Russia. He twice declined this opportunity and reinforced his attack on the Ukrainian people. Biden’s USA dug in as did the nations of NATO declaring their intention to militarily support the  forces of Ukraine for as long as it took to force Russia’s hand.
An impasse which hovers both sides on the very brink of nuclear confrontation.

China skips back and forth playing peacemaker to the UN and brother in arms to its Communistic ally, Russia. Yet all the while China trumpets its ultimate destiny of world ******* by force. Flexing her muscle in the Spratley and Paracell islands of the South China sea where she has expanded coral atolls into fortified military airfields threatening the free trade sealanes between Asia and the world. China now claims the South china sea as her own sovereign territory and patrols this seaway aggressively with armed warplanes and warships.

China confronts the Seventh Fleet of the USA navy over her demand of ownership of Taiwan, the forces are nose to jowel with fingers on the trigger. Taiwan is the world leader in production of microchips, They have the factories and the raw materials, Taiwan own the secrets of the processing. China are desperate to get this technology… and they need it now for further development of their computer and space research development. They have threatened Taiwan with military maneuvers and declarations of intention to invade. The only thing stopping them is the standoff with the USA military. Hair trigger stuff which is so volatile it could erupt at any time.

I gaze out the window here in the beautiful green foothills of Mt. Taranaki in New Zealand. The Tasman sea extends out for miles as a peaceful, shimmering deep blue visage. The air is warm and still in this early Autumn harmony. Birds fly by, farmers till their fields bringing in the season’s crop of maize. Harmony, peace and beauty reign supreme. A masterpiece of order and something of immense value to all who live here and share it……But for how long before it all becomes destruction, despair and subjugation. How long before the aggression and the greed for power reaches out to this far outpost of humanity to crush the life out of it with it’s sudden, vast, violent and toxic nuclear fist?

The way humanity is going right now?…..NOT LONG!

I listened to a podcast recently where this question was put to a number of philosophers, scientists, authors and national leaders…..”When will War End?”
The consensus of opinion was that war has always been a part of mankind’s makeup. Only humans and Chimpanzees wage war and only humans do it with a visceral passion.
When humans wage peace…they get bored! Peace is boring!  …genuinely this was a common theme.
The group saw warfare as an inherent part of man’s competitive nature, they saw it as a compilation of greed, ego, lust for power and assets.

When will war end? Certainly not in my lifetime, probably never!
Live with it, they said!

M@Foxglove,Taranaki NZ