Reflections on Flight

Oh Indian if you could see
From high afloat a jet
The land where once you romped so free
The land one can't forget.

The warrier and his gallant steed,
Standing on a crest,
Could never know the wondrous greed
of Nature in the West.

Or in the north, the beautiful blue
of Myriad million lakes
The rocks, the pines, the hazy hue,
The rivers like curling snakes.

Or in the east, along the shores,
The farms in gentle row,
The scraggy inlets, like giant gores
Hindering the ocean's flow.

This Canada, Oh warrior braves
Has changed since your silent time.
The cacaphony of commerce waves
To the cities' rhythmic rhyme.

The sleepy villages, the busy towns,
Know a peace that n'er was yours.
Your life was free... but it knew bounds...
And on the liner soars.

Comparing then your life to mine
I'm glad that I was given,
The magic of a strato-line
To embrace my land from heaven.

Inseparable

Each day of life is a new beginning
Each loss but a step to a final winning
Each happiness a result of an earlier grief,
For life is like a wind-blown leaf
With no direction, no master plot
That the wind of chance has cannily caught.

Life is the total of the good and the bad,
The gay and the merry, the sombre and the sad.
And, knowing its agony is to know its balm,
For the wind of chance is sometimes calm
And the leaf of life that today might fly
Tomorrow might flutter and settle and die.

Yet none is free to die, having been born,
For certain bonds unite - as the sheaf and the corn.
The farmer, whose fields yield forth his grain,
Is he dead, when dead, never to produce again?
Or lives he on, in crops to be reapt
From seed he stored before he slept?

And none is free to live, having died.
For death like the ocean flow cannot be denied.
And the living still must live, to link the chain
Of continuity, that make the dead alive again.
For the leaf of life that today might fly
Tomorrow might flutter, and settle and die.

Life is death and death is life, moreover
Inseparable the two, as the bee and the clover.
And whether the leaf of life flies on
Or whether flutters, settles and is gone
What follow death is life renewed
A link... a connection... an interlude.

A Subject for Inquest

A little boy -
Belly bulging
With delight,
And, Black-blotched without,
From ice cream dripping
That didn't make it.

A little boy -
Feet dirty
From city cement,
And hard-crusted with skin
Abrased by their piston action
On the baked pavement.

A little boy -
In blue bathing trunks
Covering white buttocks
Untouched by prairie sun
But, bobbing busily in response
To the piston feet.

A little boy -
In desperate competition
With traffic lights
And diesel trucks with weary drivers,
Frightened, as a panicked fawn
Encircled by snarling wolves.

A little boy -
Belly full - piston feet dirty,
Buttocks white, but now still,
Lying, limply lifeless
In a weeping mother's arms
Dead, in the hot summer.

KES Summer 1967

To a Mirror Rescued from the Sally Ann Second Hand Shop

What friend are you that flaunts our history?
After Thirty years, am I still a mystery?
As vain as I, when you consider all we've shared
Should I not assume that you really cared?

It was my artistry that antiqued your fading style
and saved you from ignominy in a refuse pile.
I provided you with life and purpose and stature
And personal moments that were yours to capture.

Now you hang omniscient on the bathroom wall
reflecting... revealing... showing it all.
I charge you, O Mirror... be faithful... be fair.
Lie to me... coddle me... show me you care.

Though my face is leathered, weathered and lined
Must you, my friend, portray it so cruelly unkind.
Could you not search your file of earlier reflections
And delude me, your benefactor, with kinder selections?

O Mirror, Mirror, don't abet life's relentless race;
But stop the process and restore the face
Of the youth who held you in such respectful esteem.
Lie to me... Coddle me... Allow me my dream.

KES April 1992

On Pollution

I build a dream
and in that dream all Nature
combines to force a scheme
whereby mankind no longer knows travail.

The wind in gentle ways
removes impurities from the days -
the sun and moon provide the light
and verdant growth delights the sight.

What farce is this?
Is not all Nature now
geared to provision and control
for the benefit of Me
and all Mankind?

'Tis Man, who in his greed
has caused the little child to bleed -
and pain and anguish everywhere
that Man has gone.

Nature cannot be improved
except in Man whose vessels must be moved
to eliminate human suffering and pain
rather than the search for gain.