FINEST STRANDS OF SILK
The finest strands of silk cannot declare,
the warmth and colour of your slumber’s hair.
Nor darkness hide the waves that rise and fall:
the gentle roll of hills and valleys call.
And luster of soft sands caress the sea…
The restless ever restless sea.
Jim Davis
Jimdaviscreativearts.ca
FIVE LOAVES AND TWO FISHES
For a harvest of wheat and barley, both nurtured by rains and the sun,
And the netting of freshwater fishes,
in reaches where such life is spun,
A young mother whispers her prayer, for the meal and her only child:
Her son, as he stirs in late slumber, and awakens to morning mild.
The rabbi will be by the lakeside, and a throng of thousands will hear,
That Almighty is healing His people, and the time long foretold now draws near.
There is guilt and great fear in high places
Where greed and power employ.
Will Almighty watch over this youngest,
And shelter from harm her boy?
The heat of five loaves slowly rises, whilst two fish first simmer, then fry,
And the sun barely clears the horizon, commencing its arc through the sky.
The food, so lovingly handled, gently laid in its linen to rest.
As the mist of night’s morning envelops,
And the shroud with pure dew is blessed.
Her love’s gift: a simple beginning, on a seemingly most common day.
Her son’s gift, so freely shared, will herald God’s love on display.
The question exquisitely answered, executed for all to see.
As on that day on the hillside, by a sunlit inland sea.
THE PAPERMAKER
The years of careful devotion, to a process of consummate chance.
To the meter of strictest timings, of a two-thousand-year old dance.
Countless hours of watching, and the study of a practiced hand.
Calm the furrowed brow and the tension, in the papermaker’s glance.
The waltzing of flow and slow ebbing, in the translucent film on the screen.
Soft movements of shifting and settling, the loft and its lustrous sheen.
Combining invisible strands, like past bars from the ballroom’s stand,
In a purposeful hope for perfection, from a lifetime’s love to gleen.
A master’s work, nearing perfection, is always a tribute to treasure.
So, too, a child’s meager offerings are cherished beyond common measure.
Though ragged, uneven, and flawed, early sheets may seem barely planned
Yet the Master of masters loves equally, and gently whispers his pleasure.
Each life, unique in its making, imploring the quill and stain.
Each stain unique in its purpose, recording both losses and gain.
Each message in time briefly captured: wetted prints holding court in the sand.
Tides returning, the turning of pages, …
Christ’s love and forgiveness remain.
Jim Davis
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KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT LOVE
I knew an Adam of bookshelves with miles coated in dust.
And tallest towers of numbers reducing to shards and rust.
And oceans of human creations from rivers that flowed to the sea.
Where tides of money and avarice churned in stark misery.
When engines made no sound as they flicked at the speed of light.
Dictating knowledge and garbage – scraped without love or delight.
Yes, that Adam knew much yet so little; most long forgotten in time.
Countless streams of ideas and process, devoid of a purpose divine.
What needles, in need, worth retrieving: what kernels of truth, gray and cold?
Precious gemstones hard-won by miners with hearts and minds bartered and sold.
Rubies, sapphires, and emeralds – all crafted to shine in the light,
All twisted and turned to agents of greed, subjugation, and blight.
Were love at the heart of his knowledge, how glorious that Adam could be.
Yet how could love’s wisdom prevail over man’s conflicted duality?
Jim Davis
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NEVER BEFORE
Never before has knowledge been so written to weather time.
Never before has language encompassed so expansive a store.
Never before such a multitude so recording the reason of minds.
Never before so teeming and roiling that restless sea.
Never before has humanity so promulgated “knowledge is all.”
Never before has science so mirrored the transient gardens.
Never before old writings so much chaff on time’s granary floor.
Never before so beleagered the wisdoms of past golden seasons.
Yet never before, as we garner, so it seems the less we have learned.
Jim Davis
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THOUGHTS CONCEIVED
How high can the condor rise with only its outstretched wings?
How inspired are the solitaire’s notes in the beautiful call it sings?
How moving the practiced words mimicked by an African grey?
How remorseful the golden eagle as it plummets toward its prey?
How thankful is the dolphin, as it twists and turns and leaps?
How grateful is the orca, while appointed rounds it keeps?
How mournful is myxini in the darkness of the sea?
How uplifted is an anabas, perched high in a forest’s tree?
When a grizzly suckles her cubs, is there more than hardwired care?
When the tigress forgoes bearing, while her young are still in her lair?
When death claims one of the family, do elephants truly grieve?
When behaviours seem beyond instinct, are thoughts without language conceived?
When an infant first touches its mother, do thoughts really travel two ways? Must language be part of the process when regret first precedes delay? Is there any other creature who a single question could frame?Any other reasoning mind a commensurate response could claim?
O human so tiny and sudden in the vastness of space and time. Only creature of known intersection where question and response combine. Powered flight, written music, printed text, themed fine art, complex math: these your wings, But without love, O wasteful Icarus – pit canary that barely sings.
Surely love is the source of your being: without love, you will fall from your sky. Surely love is your purpose for living: without loving, you will wither and die. Surely love is a precious gift given; not invented nor a cast of the die. Surely love should be, precious creature, your existential reply.
Jim Davis
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THE WOODSMAN AND THE RESCUE
The forest concealed a truth, as it towered and sheltered its kin.
The treetops rustled a hint, of a silence that harboured no sin.
The dappled solitude broken, by a drumming or knocking within;
And the passage of time and of footsteps, as the woodsman entered in.
The beauty of nature exploded in a torrent of sensual sighs.
The shimmer of sunlight dancing, for myriad instinctual eyes.
The thousands of tiniest movements, a choreography belies,
All suddenly seen in his mind’s eye, released from that colder disguise.
The woodsman’s love for the forest, rivaled only by that for his friend.
Years of working and resting together, in the stand of a forest to tend.
Simple meals shared – freely given: the gleam of a coat on the mend.
The rescue, once lost and abandoned, redeemed by one willing to bend.
Without love, a forest is empty, of all it could possibly be.
Without love, a rescue can’t happen, in the midst of life’s turbulent sea.
When the woodsman bends in his passing, to share love that sets him free,
More than mute forest is witness to love’s deepest mystery.
Jim Davis 2022
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HEARTACHE REPLACED
There’s no point in asking why.
There’s never a cogent reply.
There’s whispered regret, that’s true,
Still that’s hardly sufficient for you.
Of course, it’s not real they say,
Though you decay a little each day.
Like a ship listing at sea,
Fate drives you on, despite all hope long gone.
Such promise in you once foretold.
Such passion and fire now grown cold.
Such beauty and trust now betrayed.
But no guilt on those charletons laid.
You harbour in anguish now,
Moored up like some dirty old scow!
Scurrilous crew on a drunk,
While brightest hour turns dark and sour.
The history of man marches on;
The black marks on pages of dawn.
The first fires that pushed back the night,
Spawning words that blazed with new light.
Yet, injustice skulked, always close by.
Subjugation – mere flicks of an eye.
“Might is right” on the tip of each tongue.
Reason, so highly regarded, disdainfully discarded.
Man’s kingdoms wax briefly then wane.
Man’s conquests each carry their stain.
Man’s nature the hyena’s kin;
Although, their’s more instinct than sin.
Both play the gluttonous fool
But humans, by far, the more cruel.
They murder, by choice, their own,
Then those servants that come, then comes the land owner’s son.
“In what shall I trust?”, strikes a chord:
In governance dealt by the sword?
In Blind Leading the Blind so pale,
When placed next to our sorrowful tale?
Great leaders, in whom we should trust,
Disappoint and go down to the dust!
Where is a king we can laud?
Who will shepherd and save from birth to grave?
Though my country has seen better days,
Though the lighthouse hardly scissors the haze,
Though songs of ascent guide me now,
As the breakers crash over her bow,
I will hold her for the ship I once knew.
Men’s stains tallied, yet her glories still due.
While the storm’s rages swell through the night,
Faith’s firmer footing I now treasure in God’s loving measure.
Jim Davis 2022
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KING OR SERVANT
Before our world existed, a love was meant to be.
Before our star’s bright burning, the colours of the sea.
Before the sweep of ocean waves, wild winds would have to blow.
And bending masses coalesce to check their ebb and flow.
And heavens’ bright celestial spinnings were just a blink in time,
And these – before a single cell – first had to all align.
More rare than gold or uncut stones – mere forgings of the Earth.
Gleamed the highest mystery: why a human birth?
A complex symphony of life played out in time and space.
And – aeons old – against all odds, each strand a closer trace.
Refining lines of twisted threads, woven out and in,
With yet no hint of wonderment, of happiness, or sin.
Then one quiet moonlit night, that glance up to the sky…
First glint of self-awareness in a raised bipedid’s eye…
Alone, yet just as vulnerable as all life spun before.
Great march of myriad creatures through life’s revolving door .
From all the countless lineages lost in death’s decay.
To all the telling patterns transposed in ancient clay.
Crescendo of that moment: not “How?” but rather “WHY”?
Beyond the call of instinct, a language to reply.
Perhaps some other intelligence clicks in oceans deep.
Or howls or caws in unison beyond true instinct’s creep.
Alone, that glance would rise above all other minds’ discourse,
To question why to live and die beyond just brutish force.
To live to live! To die to die! What other creature’s choice?
“To die to live”! “To live to die”! What other creature’s voice?
To rule as king, or servant be – which the greater part?
To serve, as king, the Golden Rule hearkens to the start!
Before our world existed, a love was meant to be.
Before our star’s bright burning, the colours of the sea.
Jim Davis 2022
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O CANADA – MY COUNTRY
O Canada – my country, … our lonely times now rise;
Your sons’ and daughters’ braying, while the hymn we sang now dies.
Our love so true – our faith in you, now seemingly eschewing,
While mourners gaze on fallen grace, the outcome so despairing.
Why, O God? God? God? …The wasting loft of sails?
All valours lost in fog so thick, while broken Beauty fails?
O Beauty – my country – rise up amid the swells!
Rise up – for you the sails still set – in holds some hope still dwells;
For you, a child and dreamers dream; … for you, now all are longing.
For you, they search – the mindless ones – their bartered hearts now burning.
O Beauty! O Canada! Cruel words upon your stone – some twist of fate, some horror stark: “By cold hearts, now alone!”
My Beauty cannot linger: her love’s a cold embrace.
My country cannot feel the pain that through her vessels race.
Beneath cold waters deep and dark, her final berth unsung,
While faithful bell that always tolls, decries a death so young.
Despair, you sons! …And daughters wail! ,,,You captains live with shame!
Or is this just a nightmare’s flash …with morning yet to come?
Jim Davis 2022
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Commentary:
The Canadian Prime Minister, without any reported explanation, and his sitting members of the Liberal Party, did not make any publicized effort, including a bipartisan effort requested by two major federal parties, to recognize, meet, hear, respect, discuss, and negotiate in a reasoned and required effort to end sanctions that specifically targeted only unvaccinated international truck drivers – many who had worked tirelessly to maintain supply chain management through two consecutive years of the COVID 19 pandemic.
That prime minister, bolstered by unanimous support of his Liberal party and the NDP, unlawfully invoked the EA without having made every reasonable effort first to address the Parliament Hill blockade, as specifically required by the EA precondition to implementation.
Concurrent international border crossing blockades were largely resolved using existing laws, regulations, AND police services, calling into question the serious overreach that permitted seizure of property, threats of such seizure, and the implementation of mandatory conscripted service without reasonable judicial oversight.
Precedent has now been established that could permit future gratuitous invocation of the EA by any government that does not approve of nor wish to discuss and resolve fundamental rights and reasonable grievances across a broad spectrum of issues.
The very significant financial underpinning of mainstream media organizations, combined with disturbingly one-sided reporting and commentary, have harmed media credibility and public oversight crucial to democracy.
Just two days following the required approval of parliament for its enactment, the EA was revoked without adequate and specific explanation or justification.
The PM and his Liberal government SHOULD BE immediately and publicly committed to an impartial, detailed, and fully transparent parliamentary inquiry, as required by any invocation of the EA. Time will soon witness the diligence and veracity of such an inquiry under just such an arrogant, brazen, and callous government.
Commentary:
Jim Davis 2022
Citizen of Canada
A WALK BY THE SALTWATER MARSH
A wind swept in from the sea, recalling a lonesome song.
Creased eyes wept from merging thoughts, betraying a love long gone.
Plodding steps on wetted dunes, forestalling a truth be told.
That day on the north shore marsh, confronting that blood runs cold.
Still love is a gift from God, redeeming the broken soul.
Tears shed for life’s misgivings, hindering being made whole.
Walking with freewill laden, burdening every child.
Comes the day love reaches out, forgiveness seems harsh, not mild.
God’s gifts, many and subtle, release the yoke from strain.
When love is softly calling, surrender to its refrain.
Relief through regrets falling, nourishing all hopes anew.
Faith has a firmer foundation: “Walk with me?” – God’s call to you.
Jim Davis
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Jim Davis Creative Arts: Paintings, Poetry, Prose, and Commentary 