Time Spent In A Valley

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

Like so many of my poems, this one is not a strictly autobiographical. Yet, as I get older, my mind loves to wander to places where I have been happy; in reality and in my imagination. It is not only a pleasant pastime but also distracts from wondering how many such times I have left to me...

Oh, but how green is the valley of our imagination and how hard to reconcile it with a need to tend and nurture as reality bites, and we grow up...

"Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices." - Jiddu Krishnamurti 

TIME SPENT IN A VALLEY

Once I played in a place full of shadows,
chasing after them as I might butterflies,
trying to catch but always failing, dropping
to the ground in fits of laughter rippling
across a valley like raindrops on that lake
where I’d swim among ducks and swans
in hues of silver, gold, pink, come the sun’s
yawning at dawn, glaring at noon, roaming
Memory Lane in a twilight spitting blood,
sunsets reminiscent of this world’s wars
whose shadows, to its own design, always
find a source to blame, scapegoat to ease
the consciences of poor souls born to front
a politics of separatism

Years on, I revisited those same shadows,
wary of them as I might be of ghosts,
trying to hide but always failing, cowering
in corners praying to a Heaven I doubted
that I’d not be discovered or, if so, taken
in shackles to some cliff edge and forced
to consider awful lies told, mistakes made,
excuses given for believing in justification
(or glorification?) of the ego rather than seek
redemption in humility, let dying echoes in
the shadow of a child’s soul feed imagination,
relying on a custom built God for salvation
should the politics of disintegration become
a serious moral issue

Growing old, I haunt that place of shadows,
greet them as old acquaintances, even try
pretending we were friends, though forced
to confess I’d sought them out for own ends
but keen to make amends (no idea how)
mindful of nature’s gentler surrounds, inner
eye blinking at children chasing after a fragile
mortality, asking questions not asked before
when answers seemed far less important than
actions according to whatever rule of thumb
convenient at the time, perhaps best explained
or excused as ‘meant well’ or (better still)
for the greater good of generations warned
against hurting butterflies

Valley of shadows, where words left unsaid
gorge on things left undone - and spit us out

[From: Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2007]