Sunset on a Country Churchyard
Today’s poem is a recent revision of an early piece, written in 1972, first published in Reach (issue 6) poetry magazine in 1997 and subsequently in my first collection.
Whenever I read early poems, I am often prompted to make revisions; sometimes major, sometimes minor, but always significant. Oh, but if only we could look back on our lives and do the same…
SUNSET ON A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
A subtle blush
haunts the sky like a shy ghost
stroking the fair-haggard visage
of a long day’s dying
Owl, flying the killing fields;
confetti, where hearses
passed for wedding cars, answer
to a mother's prayers;
a clapping like bats' wings
for fraternity's sake
in the womb-tomb of our history
at this, my wake;
fireflies, frantically obscuring
photographs of us, like the tears
dancing on every eye
A full moon's up,
Rabbit starts, darts for cover;
Owl knows better (even than us)
how soon it's all over
Copyright R. N. Taber 1997; 2001; 2014
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Book, 2001.]
Labels: death, ghosts, human nature, human spirit, imagination, inspiration, life forces, love, mind-body-spirit, mortality, nature, personal space, poetry, posthumous consciousness, relationships, sunset
posted by R. N. Taber | 17:59
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