http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
We need to measure time in seconds,
minutes, hours and days etc. to give our very existence a semblance of
structure; similarly, we need language to communicate and try (at least) to
make sense of it. Time and again, though, I get the feeling we are working
from false premises. Certainly, means do not necessarily justify ends which, in
turn, as often as not, prove to be unfit for purpose. They may well satisfy
some of us some of the time, but what about the rest of us and all that
leftover time?
For a bigger picture than even the
most detailed archives convey, we can but try to read between lines we so love
to draw in sand (and the arts) if only to explore the spaces and establish an
affinity of sorts with the immeasurable and indescribable…
The emotions invoked by death are immeasurable,
not least because death itself remains beyond even the most creative imagination.
Better, surely, if and when we are made to face the indescribable, to focus on
we can describe and share by way of giving voice to and in part
reliving the joys whose loss threatens us with free fall?
Memory helps, of course and is an infinite source of comfort as we recall happy times spent with loved ones; a bitters-sweet comfort some might argue as there can be no adequate compensation for their loss and absence from our lives; for me, memories, dreams, daydreams and yes, poetry conjure up the spirit of a person which, albeit posthumous, is as much a part of me as it ever was ...
AN AFFINITY (OF SORTS) WITH GHOSTS
Where wintry days
would have left us hanging
by dark memory’s thread,
returned to life in the flicker
of a sparrow’s eye seconds
before closing its Here-and-Now
on a world where death
attends creatures great and small
by way of their inclusion
with as select a company of ghosts
as inspire peace and love
Shadows, a gathering
of ghosts around weepy graves
littered with fading flowers,
a pooling of a-political policies
of positive thought to share
without fear or favour with eyes
to see, ears to listen,
lips able to move (no strings)
human hearts engaging
with aeons of having to learn
and unlearn, human minds
discovering and rediscovering,
shaping and reshaping,
working and (ever) reworking
parodies of human nature,
cartoons giving home truths a run
for their money
Earth Mother, lending us
an affinity with ghosts so voyagers
across time and space
may follow such tracks as mock
a humankind obsessed
with a Here-and-Now vulnerable
to its vanity’s attempts
at measuring the immeasurable
if only for sanity’s sake,
its worst fears last seen dissolving
into a rainbow, rain clouds
already parting to let the sun back
in,
bring hope where there is despair,
give any heart wings to fly wherever,
share love and peace
among all the world’s winners and
losers,
each to their own
I took poor sparrow
in my bare hands, clinging
to life in a sticky heat,
faint pulse denying death
its victory until nature
in its greater wisdom giving
the nod to its passing
an evergreen memory in us
of its winging free of time and
hour
in every beat the heart skips
Copyright R. N. Taber 2014; 2019