http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
For some people, winter is a time for looking back at kinder, happier, better, days, especially those who may find themselves alone at times like Christmas and other festive and/or religious occasions meant to be a time of coming together in a spirit of love and peace. Yet love-and-peace is neither seasonal nor an excuse for making out all is well with the world when it's not, but an all year round perennial, no excuses; we have but to believe in it and be prepared to play our part - big or small - to make it happen
(Photo taken from the Internet)
(Photo taken from the Internet)
The trick, so I'm told by wiser folks than me, is to draw on that same feeling for love-and-peace that once inspired us, and let it inspire us into renewal; just as spring always follows winter so, too, that springtime of the heart if we but choose to let it go there. Sometimes, we don't need to colour things simply because - if we want it to be - the truth is plain to see in glorious black and white; colour it by all means, but we need to let our better senses do that for us.
WINTER, LIFE FORCES IN THE SNOW
Earth and sky coloured ominous
one
midnight in midwinter
when I
looked out of my window
to see a heavy snow falling,
thought I
heard an owl calling me
(No,
mistaken, surely ...?)
Then I
saw it, silvery bird gliding
phantom-like, summoning
images of a lace
tablecloth gracing
our
table, oh, so many years ago,
when love-and-peace would spread
its wings and voice its pain
No family
now, only a scattering
of
memories like winter snow
piling on
a branch by my window,
heaped higher
even than regrets
these eyes
glaring back at me deny
(or could it be they lie?)
Gone, the
owl now, weary wings
but wistful,
fleeting, moments
like characters in a classic movie
colouring themselves shades
of some broken rainbow colouring
decades of wishful thinking
The wind
is up. A blizzard throws
an angry
net over glaring traffic
on the
night shift, testing the weary
and fainthearted, suggesting
an omnipresence if only to make up
for any human shortfall
Will nature
stand by and let owl die
or lend it such sanctuary as found
under a cosy duvet inviting us to close
the eyes,
bury the face, leave owl
winging winter's worst, not our fault
if that's just the way it is?
The heart, it yearns for the colours
of spring to bring it back to life,
recover perspectives long since flown,
comfort where there is but pain
for the way life was before its landscape
changed so ... or was it me, us?
Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2018
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Shot in Black and White' Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]
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