Anything

Anything comes to me

like waves gently 

lapping in my soul, 

trickling silty sand 

through my fingers

directing the word flow gently.

Rounded pen point caressing the page.

Anything is an image

a flower,

a waterfall

Anything is a sound 

crashing, jangling

tiny, soft

Anything is a feeling

calmness,

rage,

excitement or

love

~~~~~

Anything is seldom nothing.

Except when so far in the distance

that only slight movement gives it away.

Anything's sound is buried in layers of far away.

Anything does not come when called,

only looks and stares

like a cat questioning

my audacity at calling its name.

Anything

curls up on my lap when I am sitting 

to dream 

to watch television

Anything

rains on my head when I’m in the shower

rises from garden soil clinging to roots and rocks

Anything 

drifts through my thoughts busy with the days tasks,

distracting me from the should’s and shouldn’t’s in front of me

Anything surrounds me

warm, cold or intemperate

waiting to be recognized.

Recognition will grow anything

into something.

“Let us not look back in anger, not forward in fear,

but around in awareness.”

~ James Thurber

**The first five lines were written as part of a workshop exercise about ‘anything’:  in group discussion following the reading, it was suggested that these lines ‘do not belong’ or ‘sound separate from’ the lines to follow. 

Nov.21, 2023: I recall the group meeting and the suggestion from the group discussion. I re-read this today and disagree with the group consensus. This has shown me how readers actually finish a piece of writing. I have included a line break today for clarity.

                    

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Fireworks in the night sky. No one sees ground level preparations for the beautiful light shows that we ooh and aah over. Samuel Henry Henderson was one of the behind the scenes guys.

Henry had started working with fireworks as a boy running along railroad tracks with his best friend. They would stop every ten railroad ties and put a tiny firecracker on the rails. They’d dash into the bushes lining ditch along the railroad tracks, hide and watch as the train went by. Nothing ever happened, for which he was very grateful when he learned the danger of such childhood fun.  

When the two friends slept outside they would stare up at the sky, making up stories about the winking stars and the waxing or waning moon. When he was in his late fifties, he was responsible for most of the designing, filling out of purchase orders and directing his staff in placement and timing of a large fireworks show. He ran the whole annual operation with efficiency. He and his staff created beautiful bouquets of night flowers for the great community gatherings. It could be a dangerous job lighting explosives for a few minutes of someone else’s entertainment. But the aroma of burning explosive, the drift and smell of smoke added drama to the experience. As the smoke cleared, the sky came back into clarity, presenting a backdrop for the stars, silver moon and sometimes thin scattered clouds.

When he retired ten years later, he left all of his directions and instructions to his much younger replacement. But he couldn’t leave his vision. His vision had come from the nights he spent outside when the sky was clear, the moon was just a sliver and the stars held court in the black velvet sky. He tracked the stars, saw the different constellations and longed to add motion to them, to bring wonder to the children and families of his community.

This job, seasonal in nature, had been a sideline and a joy that had finally realized his dream of orchestrating showers of man made starlight that seemed to pour from the Big Dipper, and light shows reminiscent of the aurora borealis. Now passing the torch to a much younger man, he just might be letting another ‘boy’ realize a dream from his own childhood.

Henry stepped outside on a dark star lit night, looked up and smiled.

“Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into 
the conception of what can be. Imagination 
gives you the picture.  Vision gives you 
the impulse to make the picture your own.

~ Robert Collier

A Cartoon Date

In memory

Jerry Nelson - the voice of the Count von Count

July 10, 1934 - Aug. 23, 2012

His elegant deep lavender nose curved down his elegant lavender face. 

Black eyebrows were knitted together wondering about his blind date 

this evening. Count von Count was wearing his favourite and most elegant cape with purple silk lining, his top hat perched rakishly on his head, and his silver headed cane ready to point and count. 

Ah Ah Ah AAh! How many restaurants would they dine in? 

one restaurant?

two restaurants? 

three restaurants?  

Ooh, if his blind date ate too much she would look like Miss Piggy before the Jane Fonda Workout tapes that she used! Maybe he was supposed to be blind?  He was so nervous!

And then he saw her. Her delicate mauve skin graced with a gently curving nose and shiny satin-black hair. Her cape – ah, her cape – it was as fine and elegant as his own. Black and lined with the same mauve silk.

One cape!  

Two capes 

Ah Ah Ah AAh!

She also wore a black silk top hat and gracefully carried a silver headed cane.  

One top hat!

Two top hats!

One cane!

Two canes!

Ah Ah Ah AAh!

They would be perfect together. They could count together.  

He just knew that she could count. “Let me introduce myself. I am the Count von Count!” He bowed low. Low enough, so she could not see his lavender skin flush to a deep plum.  

“And I,” she said, "am the Countess.”  

"How many restaurants we are going to?”  

One restaurant?

Two restaurants?  

Three restaurants?

Four restaurants?  

Her squeaky Muppet voice tinkled in his pointy lavender ears.  

At last someone to count with. 

“Well my dear, we will go to

one restaurant

two restaurants

and then to the Petting Zoo 
where we can count all the animals.  
We will count 

fourteen goats

two alpacas and

many, many rabbits.  Ah Ah Ah AAh!

After that we will go to the train station. The old train station."  

“Ooh, the old train station! Can I guess what we will do there?”  The countess laughed and laughed "Ah Ah Ah AAh!"

“Yes, my dear. You have 

one guess

two guesses

three guesses”  

“One guess - we will ride on one train.”

"No. No. No."

Two guesses - we will buy two tickets to ride on one train.

"No. No. No."

"Three guesses – we will sit on 

one park bench where we can see 

one train, hold our 

two hands and 

count all of the cars on every train coming in!"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"Ah Ah Ah AAh!       Ah Ah Ah AAh!"

As the evening darkened and settled quietly, all that could be heard in the surrounding town was a faint train whistle and ‘Ah Ah Ah AAh!’ floating on the warm summer’s breeze. The Count and the Countess counted the train cars until it was too dark to see and the evening had faded to black. 

*****

Thanks Jerry!  You infused the Count's character with your wonderful gift of voice!

“The human voice is the organ of the soul.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Something's Fishy - #1

Refurbished Pier B at Ogden Point
Sept. 5, 12

Something's Fishy - #1

“What’s this?!” Freddie said to no one in particular. He allowed only his best friends called him to call him 'Freddie'.

An odd looking, but very dapper fish,  Frederique Poisson had been reading an interesting, but very troubling article, 

in the James Bay Beacon. Front page news informed readers that Pier B would be undergoing repairs. Major repairs.  

Frederique's scales, a lovely shade of purple, seemed to be all fins. His two large eyes rimmed in black made him look quite distinguished and intelligent.The purple scales with four large white dots marching down his belly, assured everyone that he was one of the more interesting, and refined, tenants living under Pier B. His golden fins, with spines of red, were wavy and tastefully ragged.  

When he got upset, as he was now, his flamboyant fins seemed to take on a life of their own sending him swimming around in his little condominium till he bumped into the wet rock wall knocking the soggy newspaper out of the grip of his side fins.  

Frederique had followed many stories in the little community paper, but this one was positively upsetting. His condominium was to be demolished! It was only a widened, but small, crack under Pier B, a cosy condo that he found quite by accident when he was being chased by one of the diving birds in the bay. Pier B, and therefore his condominium, was where those intrusive humans were going to begin their repairs. The words 'cement' and 'stainless steel' had been used and he knew both were intended for cracks - in other words, his home!

Taking in a great gush of water through his gills and letting out an equally great mass of bubbles, Frederique's swimming slowed, his wavy fins settling themselves into some sort of order, as he continued to read. The disturbing article also explained about the pressures on the piers at Ogden Point. The newspaper reported that newer technology on the massive cruise ships coming into harbour, in the form of ‘side thrusters,’ had shaken the pilings and the piers so badly that there was increasing erosion to the piers. No wonder there had been so many convenient cracks for him and his friends to live in. He had felt the shaking but just thought it was the earthquakes that the little paper insisted on reporting ad nauseum to it’s readers.

Having finally settled his fins, and given it some more thought, Frederique decided that he would be safest in another home. He did want to stay safely under Pier B; however he decided that a temporary move to Pier A would be much more prudent. Tucking his newspaper under the rock by the front entrance, his golden, red lined fins gently moving the water around his purple, and white 'buttoned' form, Freddie swam out to do some house hunting with his friends.

“I find the great thing in this world is, not so much 

where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Author's note: since 2012, Fredrique did in fact find a new condo but was not happy about the noise level. The wharfs had been expanded, more cruise ships have come in since then, buses rumbled across his new condo, the rolling wheels of suitcases and stomping of feet. He was so glad he didn't have feet! He flipped his beautiful fins and left for the day, still house hunting.

November 21, 2023

This is based on an actual event reported and published in a Victoria newspaper, The James Bay Beacon.

Prairie Storm

A grand prairie sky is broad and blue and bright, 
on midsummer day over fields greening with wheat, 

on midwinter day over 

white snow blanketing the earth.

Broad blue sky goes end to end from horizon to horizon, 

notched only by small town roofs or spires of city skyscrapers.  

(On the prairies they don’t have to be tall to scrape the sky.)

Sky ~ wide azure blue back drop for

red-tailed hawk and the red winged black bird, 

curlews and meadowlarks.

But what’s this?

In the western corner of this broad blue canvas a puff of grey builds.  

Flag of white stretches before it.  

Sky fills with clouds of thunder gray 

churning into black and ominous green.  

Air bright with light, pierced by bird song 

hushed with gathering storm.

The gentle blue sky will take it all up.

Soon the glorious sky is blackened, white streaks threatening hail.

Bluffs and trees bend in the wind bowing right and left to 

the town on the horizon

the city on the horizon

all coloured over with wet grayness.

In shards and sheets, 

lightning is chased onto the prairie by claps of thunder, 

making me hold my ears and squint my eyes.

And then ~ in the western corner

a wedging patch of blue, narrow and hesitant, 

pushes the heavy wet clouds forward with the winds.

Sky ever expanding, moves chastened clouds to the east.

The dampened scent of the rain has cleaned dust from the air.

Air in the sky, once again broad and blue, 

holds space for curlews and red-tailed hawk,

red winged black birds and meadow larks.

Peace has returned to the prairies.

“The little reed, bending to the force of the wind,

soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.”

~ Aesop