On Discovering the Bitter-Sweet Poetry of Time

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

As I grow old(er) - I am 70 now - I think less about actually dying than about how about much time I might have left in this life, determined (in my own way) to make the most of and enjoy it.

Incidentally, on the subject of enjoyment, I am always delighted to hear from readers who live in or are visiting London and express an interest in meeting up for a chat, whether over a friendly beer or two, a meal or just coffee. Feel free to email me any time.

Now, writing, especially poetry, may well be my preferred form of creative therapy to keep my old adversary depression at bay (which it does, very effectively) but it has also been a learning curve; hopefully it may be of some interest to someone someday to track that curve from my early to later poems. Whatever their impressions or end verdict, I would hope to get at least some brownie points for having attempted the curve in the first place. This is why, over the next few years, I hope to make revised versions of my poetry collections and novels available as e-books on Google Play to anyone who may be interested; all are on my blogs, but I can’t see them remaining on the Internet indefinitely once Time has disposed of me as and when it will.

Who knows, and what does it really matter anyway? All that really matters is that, each in our own way, we not only enjoy, but also at least try to make some sense of the Here and Now. Otherwise, what chance of our own customised cameos of life’s bigger picture ever finding a place in Time’s endless tapestry of Memory? Moreover, given the integral part the natural world plays in it, all the more reason to preserve what harmony remains between humankind and nature before the later (in time) lets it irretrievably slip away.

ON DISCOVERING THE BITTER-SWEET POETRY OF TIME

It’s a long road that winds

past the cemetery, and sometimes

I’d take a shortcut by graves,

flowers, yew trees, headstones

wiped clean or left to weeds, mosses,

history and memory

Surrounded by an enemy

called Death (so near, yet so far…);

Should I fear or be resigned

to its inevitability, let it undermine
Earth Mother's call to be true, alive

to the Here-and-Now?

The whistle pursing my lips,

a cheeky breeze in sentinel trees

sharing old jokes in the ear.

joyful shriek of starling’s return 
to the nest, flower heads following

my every move, smiling 

Oh, but I'll open up my heart

to a sun that means us well, waking
all of mind-body-spirit
to the eternal landscape of beauty
kindling peace, hope and joy, meant
to reassure us of eternity

No cause to suspect of nightfall

any less of a helping hand from nature

to preserve life, and for every petal,

stem and root that wind, rain,

or human hand displace, more on call

(in time) to take their place

In no time at all, at iron gates

and passing through, Death behind me

(barely a thought) while a rose

in the gutter where I turn

into my street brings tears to my eyes

for its loss forever

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2019

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'A Matter of Time' in  A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]