The Partisan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T  [For now, at least, this link needs the latest Adobe Flash Player  and works best in Firefox; the archives website cannot run Flash but changes scheduled for later this year may well mean the link will open without it. Ignore any error message and give it a minute or so to start up. The video lasts an hour. ] RT 3/18

Meanwhile...

As we journey through life, we inevitably leave footprints of all kinds; carbon, yes, but also emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

Just as others influence us, so we influence others, often quite accidentally...not just by family, friends, teachers or workmates but often by complete strangers. Conversations in a bus queue or on a train may well reverberate through our lives and affect us more than we realize; certainly, far more than those strangers will ever know.

We, too, invariably remain strangers to people we may well have influenced greatly by a kind word or gesture, an expression of sympathy or encouragement...

Death comes to all of us but our words and deeds live on. It isn’t only the famous who leave a legacy of character and personality for those who come after to model themselves upon or steer well clear of heading in the same direction, as the case may be...

Eternity isn’t an empty phrase. We create our own eternity in the hearts and minds of both those who live alongside us and those who come after us. In my humble opinion, they are mistaken who suggest that even Memory cannot keep faith with us once everyone who ever knew us has died. In that context, many of those we influence and by whom we have been influenced have no claim on Memory at all. Besides, eternity is a continuum.

Whatever our religious beliefs and whether or not death is the end of the road for us, we will always exist in Time.

This poem is a kenning.

THE PARTISAN

I have left footprints in sand
where waves came and took them to places
they had never been;
I have left footprints in dust
where the wind came and lent them a body
that transcends endurance;
I have left footprints in grass
where rains fell to wash away the evidence
to leave everyone guessing

I have left hand prints in sand
where waves came and lifted them to places
they longed to be;
I have left handprints in dust
where a south wind lent them flight on wings
of words, paint, and music;
I have left handprints in grass
where rains fell so none would know for sure
who jumped their garden fence

I have left my signature
where people came and carried me to places
they had never seen,
left it, too, on dirt tracks
where winds came and lent them brief access
to nature’s finest...
whose footprints on this Earth
(before it rains) may prompt us to seek answers
to questions we’ve never asked

World partisan, Nature’s partner in crime,
I am Creator and Destroyer, called Time

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2011

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer: poems by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]