Woodlanders

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

This poem first appeared on the blog in August 2008. It reflects a passion for nature that I trust will never leave me, not least because I associate it with everyone and everything I have ever loved.

Maybe it's the poet in me but I have always felt that, whatever our sex or sexuality, there is a timeless quality about love that cannot help but bring and keep us ever closer to nature. Moreover, although I subscribe to no religion, nor do I believe that relationship ends with death if only because spring always follows winter ...

While I recognise the need to create space to satisfy the housing needs of an ever growing population, deforestation is not only an attack on, it fails to take into account that we need our trees or one day there may well be no need to house any of us; global warming will take care of that.  Trees are one of our greatest allies in our battle against climate change, a battle for which humankind has only itself to blame.

WOODLANDERS

Memories, dancing

on the skin, like a gypsy

tambourine;

the two of us making love

on a battered

trench coat;

swallows nesting above

with concerns

of their own

though, unlike ours,

answerable

to none;

Earth’s music, a glorious

symphony, dying notes

no tragedy,

though we can

but snatch

at time

with child hands delighting

in the picking

of bluebells,

applauding the first

flight of baby

swallows,

sharing nature’s rapture

that will forever

endure

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2016

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised since it first appeared in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]