Close Encounters with Dark Forces

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

Reading a newspaper, watching or listening to the News these days is enough to make the strongest spirit wilt.

We could be forgiven for thinking the world is terminally ill.  Yet, the human spirit has wrestled with dark forces since the beginning of time and remains essentially undefeated; bowed, even cowed sometimes, but for all the battles it may lose, it will always win the war…one way or another.

Rogue elements of human nature kind may do their worst, but - to misquote a line from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice - the quality of human goodness is not strained, but falls like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath…

Many years ago, I had bad nervous breakdown in the course of which I was referred for professional psychiatric help, but it was too little too late and was no help at all. Fortunately for me, I was able to lean on the kindness of several wonderful people who barely knew me but saw their way to helping my despairing mind-body-spirit find a way through the scary darkness of depression and despair into the light of a new day.

It was several years before I felt able to work again, and trying to find a job after a mental breakdown can easily cause another. I came up against brick wall after brick wall until I found an Equal Opportunities organisation that lived up to its name and eventually found a job from which I would retire twenty-five years later. Sadly, that same organisation no longer exists, but there are even more people out there now, stuck in that same scary darkness from which I managed to escape...and my heart goes out to each and every one of them. Hopefully, they will find that inner strength (which never quite abandons us even when we think it has) to ask someone, anyone for help; that person may not have a clue how to help at first, but the very fact they have listened and you have asked is the best possible start a depressed person can make on mind-body-spirit's journey home.

Man, woman or child...never, ever think there is any shame in asking for help.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH DARK FORCES 

Darkness coiling around,

a wintry wind hissing at the ears,

the world like a snake poised to strike,

confusion suckling its fears

Black sky descending,

a shroud on battered mind and body,

wishful thinking cowering in a corner,

inner eye straining to see

Huge puffballs threatening

to smother even Hope’s weak breath,

as she struggles with a near blind spirit

to outwit an untimely death

Suddenly, out of nowhere,

a winking, blinking star appears,

unnerving the snake, nurturing mind

and body with history’s tears

Revived by its light, touched

by a centuries-old enduring lust

for survival, inner eye recovers its sight,

time triumphing over dust

Pinpricks of light in the black,

challenges gathering momentum,

calling on the spirit to stir its host body,

and find its way back home

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014