Scottish Highlands

Scottish Highlands

Monday, December 01, 2014

Making It Up As I Go Along #598

DAYS/NIGHTS…
--- Work is pretty run of the mill.  Fairly busy on Monday.  Less so Tuesday.  Alone for the first three hours of nightshift on Wednesday.  Had some A & W for a treat on Thursday. 
--- Lost power for an hour on Monday due to strong winds all day.  It was already gone when I got home.  Everything being very black for several blocks.  It came back on about twenty minutes after I got home but my pizza order was already made by that point.  I didn’t want to have cereal for supper after a twelve hour day. 

FRIDAY…
--- A trip to Canadian Tire.  Got some storage shelves for the laundry and storage rooms.  And there’s my Black Friday shopping all done.

SATURDAY…
--- 45 minute walk and a fair bit of hockey on TV. 

SUNDAY…
--- Walk for just under an hour.  See a heron, big woodpecker, and between sixteen and eighteen wild turkeys out in a farmers field.  Didn’t bring my camera though.  Oh dear.
--- Watch about three quarters of the Grey Cup.  They tried to make the opening ceremony too much like the Olympics.  I mean announcing the people who carry the Canadian flag into the building?  Overblown silliness.
--- My biggest complaint about the CFL has always been the showboating.  Every play ends in a player prancing around all proud of himself or trash talking the guy either he was covering or who was supposed to cover him.  I miss the days of catches being made and treated like no big deal… of sacks being treated like “I’ve done this lots of times before and will continue to do it so no big deal.”… and of touchdowns being celebrated with teammates in a spontaneous fashion.  Too many now veer away from oncoming teammates so that they can do some sort of choreographed dance/skit/charade all unimpeded for the camera.

MONDAY…
--- Thirty-five minute walk and also a trip for groceries.  Brought the camera on the walk this time… of course, I see nothing.  Still a nice, peaceful time.


Walk of Time
Living trees have turned to columns of wood
As remnants from an ancient civilization
To be traversed respectfully
Like the Greek Parthenon or a ruined Turkish library

Shuffling through inches of leaves
Dead and browning upon the ground
Turning brittle and crispy under foot
Breeze swayed green a lifetime ago

Highpoints of the trail sit bare as mountain peaks
Having broken the leaf-line we step upon frozen caked mud
Outcrops of soil perched atop pillars of ice
Each step crunching through the delicate land
As Japanese Godzilla feet
Plowing through mud modeled Tokyo

Once hidden nests exposed
Lodged within a limbs nook
Had been bustling with downy peeping life
Now lays disheveled and abandoned

The quiet of the place broken
As a jittery squirrel leaps and bounds
Scuffling through the leaves for snacks
As an frantic child at Christmas
Digging through discarded holiday wrap
Searching for that precious small treasure  
That lays somewhere down beneath

Soon will come the snow
Burying muddy Tokyo in glacial ice
Fossilizing the fragments of leaves
And filling the ruins of the unsheltered nest
Until only a knot of snow remains
In the Skeletal column of wood

All buried in pure white
For the millennia until Spring melt chips away
As a natural archeologist
Unearthing hints of a bygone age

With new leaves budding
Turning the columns to life again
Where hidden birds peep for meals
And those soil topped ice pillars
Have turned to the muddy floor of great floodwater lakes

My sloshing footsteps left to sink and slip
As tree top squirrels
Scurry through branches
Collecting great feasts of nuts. 

No comments: