The Horse Whisperer
This poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008 and is repeated today especially for 'Clive and Kate' who have recently retired to live by '...the love of our lives, the sea.' Oh, but I am so jealous.
Now, Regular readers will know that I have a passion for nature from which I take what I like to think is a strong sense of spirituality. For me, personally, religion offers nothing. At the same time, who’s to say the power and glory some attribute to ‘God’ does not belong to Nature? My understanding of God is that He is everywhere, but I cannot go along with the idea of a personified God or supreme power so all my senses feel inclined to embrace nature instead. I have felt this way since childhood, long before I became aware of my sexuality. [Just as well, I guess...]
Whatever, we should respect each other’s points of view instead of constantly sniping at them and fighting over them. [I am often accused of sniping at world religions, but if you read my preambles and poems carefully, you will see it is the hypocrisy and bigotry on which so many so-called ‘religious’ people feed - not infrequently with undisguised relish - that I am attacking.]
Incidentally, I started writing this poem on Brighton beach in 2007 and finished it on the train back to London the same day.
Foaming passions crashing down
on this, my art
God’s stallions on a last ditch run
of poetry…
Apollo, master-catcher, anxious
to break us in
Ghosts in the frame calling us out
in heaven’s name
Salty tears, a sandman’s labours
all but won
Lead palomino rears, cries, bows,
spirit unbroken
Leaning forward to bend its ear,
I, the horse whisperer
[Brighton (E. Sussex, UK) September 2007]
[From: Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]
Labels: art, arts, ghosts, human nature, imagination, mind-body-spirit, natural world, nature, poetry, posthumous consciousness, religion, sea, spirituality