Pacing in soft falling rain along a path seldom taken.
Preoccupied by thoughts, perturbed by the direction of my concerns.
How, in the epic of everyday normality, the excesses of humanity at large intercede, intrude on the peace of mind. Intrude on the grace of the green and peaceful rurality, in which I walk.

Insanity runs riot in some of the most , otherwise, passionately beautiful locales on the planet.

It manifests in the slaughter of unsuspecting innocents sitting down for a breakfast in the quiescent early morning light of old Kiev.
The monstrosity emanating directly from the mind of the mania driven, 70 year old, balding man in the Kremlin.

Carnage, death and unspeakable outrage and sorrow. Both young and old contorted, suddenly, in the stench of cordite and smoking rubble. Dreams, dreamt, just yesterday, obliterated forever.

Incandescent rage of vengeance ignited in the eyes of the beholders, a rage that will endure in a livid hatred that will perpetuate for centuries.

And of course, every day now, in the palaces of Pyongyang, Beijing, Paris, Washington, London, Delhi, Tel Aviv. Iran and Moscow, old men in expensive suits ruminate, sip rare old whisky and plot strategies on the nuclear chessboard. Moves that have the capacity of determining the endgame.

The fate of all life on earth.

In the meantime, the planet, fed up with the excesses of humankind, is reacting in melting the ice floes of Antarctica and the North Pole, swelling the oceans to engulf, warming the seas to create the emergence of devastating cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes.

Man is awakening to regions of expanding drought, vast and repetitive deluges of rainfall causing landfall and huge areas of catastrophic flooding, Encroachment of coastlines and the threat of inundation of vast low lying population areas, coastal cities and essential infrastructure, airports, power stations and arterial highways.....and then there are the wildfires, ever expanding, ever increasing in frequency and the continental choking palls of smoke.

Pondering these things, as I walk this country path in the falling rain, perhaps the greatest concern that causes my brow to furrow, is that largely, my fellow man turns the other way, preferring to put these things out of his mind. leave it to someone else to sort out. Place it all in the too hard basket.....and this attitude, I'm afraid, percolates to the top.
Concentrate on getting the votes, it will all sort itself out just so long as WE WIN THE NEXT ELECTION.

And so it goes on now, indeed.... A Whiter Shade of Pale.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

Whilst across the timeless seas to the bottom of the planet, incessant rain, snow and thrashing wind has rendered pugged cow paddocks, grassless.

Stored woodpiles, depleted due to wood fires burning continuously in hearths across the nation.

Small children, woolied up running for the morning school bus, white chilly faces and pink flushed cheeks.

Surf pounds the black sand dunes with foam flying in the gale, the marram grass howls and seagulls, flying in tortured formation, shriek their mutual rage.

Midwinter is upon us.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

A poet whose words I so admire
Once turned my compliment around
And said I was his favorite too.
I didn’t have the word for thanks
Quite grand enough for how I felt.
I’ve never been a favorite -
Not in life, or work or even love.
He put a warm place in my heart -
A Cinnabon fresh from the oven -
That perfumes my day each time
I savor those kind words from him.
              ljm

“I will always remember you”

raise you hand if honesty
yet lives inside your muscle
memory of brain, of heart,
there is no one here who hasn’t
uttered them fool lying words

with difficulty we struggle to up
raise faces and places, moments
and images no longer mirrored
within the frontmost places of
our recollection, that searing then,
itself scorched, lichen+moss covered,
our greatest pains, pleasures sworn
allegiances to these razored inflection
points, now scoured by rusty hazes,
and we wonder what has become
of us, what we valued so to savor
as forever memories, their names
gray lady shrouded, and there is
no internet site to aid in self-recovery,
for our selfish selves have been altered,
time, new loves, guilt and other stuff
intersect with mind’s eyes and no mas-
more synapses paths instant linkages

I know you will vociferously argue but
it is almost physical, our shame at losing
them and ourselves, in the morass that
time digs daily deeper for what grieves
us is that losing as the end rushes to close
our story, makes us pick up pen and finger
scratch as best we can inside the lines on
our faces that are/had proofs, witnesses,
that once, we were there at the places,
whose names are no longer mapped any

where, so deep, no archivist’s submersible dare
fathom those fathom’s darkest we would need
to explore without the possibility that we
might implode if we sunk so far to rip apart sea
forests we knowingly, secret-planted to coverup
her memory, the words spoken, the oaths
and promises, we swore, for instance, simply
by saying, “I will always remember you”

p.s. and my self-shaming so great, that my
asking for forgiveness is buried so fast, it
may, not ever been real, just another fiction


Jul  6th, 8:36 AM,