Metamorphoses, from Cradle to Grave

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

As we metamorphose from infant to adult, from birth through life to death, who’s to say what will happen to us along the way?  We can but hope to meet life’s challenges head-on and come through them a better person.

Ah, but do we ever, at heart, leave childhood behind completely? I suspect the good, the bad and the ugly affect our behaviour in later years. Some of us will have enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but life is no idyll and that can be a tough lesson to learn. Others will have been less fortunate during their formative years; we can but do our best to shrug off unwanted baggage, and turn it into something positive; for as start, looking for the good in people instead of rushing to judge the bad and the ugly. (Who knows what baggage they may be struggling to but unable to shrug off?)  

For me, this nursery rhyme invokes ghosts of childhood and beyond that represent the various stages of ‘me’; a ‘me’ visible only to the inner eye, and one - that had a BAD relationship with my father - I wish, would go away, but of course, it never will, any more than a significant part of the damage it caused. Even so, life - for most of us - is a positive learning curve, and the children we were are a far cry from the adults finally put to rest.

‘Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...’

Perhaps you know the feeling?

This poem is a villanelle.

METAMORPHOSES, FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

Days of nursery rhyme
maturing, breaking free;
haunting mists of time

Let’s walk, talk, climb
singing) up an apple tree;
days of nursery rhyme

This gene, that enzyme
maturing, breaking free;
haunting mists of time

First summits to climb,
marathons run to victory;
days of nursery rhyme

Graduating to prime,
wandering thoughtfully;
haunting mists of time

Charged with a crime
for each lost opportunity;
days of nursery rhyme,
haunting mists of time

Copyright R. N.Taber 2007; 2012

[NB This poem has been slightly revised (2012) from the original as it appears in  Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007.]

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