https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Now and then we
find ourselves confronting aspects of our past we would prefer to forget,
especially any that may have caused distress - however unintentionally - to
others.
Years ago, when I
was a psychological mess and desperate for some time to think it through and
work out a positive sense of direction for myself, I fled to Australia on the Assisted
Passage scheme; in so far as any hopes that things would be different, even
better, there, I might well have thought myself to be on yet another losing
streak. For me, though, the redeeming feature of a venture doomed to failure
from the start - not least because of the person I was then – was my meeting up
with an old aborigine to whom – for the first time ever – I found myself able
to confide my worst fears; I unleashed a string of regrets I had never quite
faced head-on, probably because I was too busy blaming them for my state
of mind.
He listened. He
said very little, but listened. When I finally shut up, we sat in a very
comfortable silence for some time until he said, “Regrets are part of life. If
they come to haunt us, it’s but to teach us. Whether or not we learn anything,
well, that is down to us, no one else.” It was such an obvious comment, yet
made more sense than anything had made sense to me for years. (I was 24
years-old.) I could hear my old English teacher, ‘Jock’ Rankin, telling me much
the same thing, and wished I had taken on the implications more, but does
anyone in their teens?
Regular readers
will know that thanks to my aboriginal friend, I flew home a few weeks later, hopefully a
better person, definitely a changed one, and more importantly willing to learn
from my ghosts instead of hating - and all but giving up on - the part of me
that gave rise to them in the first place; a part that is still there, of course, but still learning, and hurting the less so for that.
S-E-L-F, LIVING WITH THE
ENEMY
Regret is never
enough
for the graver
wrongs we do
as sure to haunt us
by day and night,
ghosts
of an alter ego
we got to know,
learned to hate, and
finally cast aside
long, long, ago
Regret is never
enough
to compensate for
any mistakes
baying at our heels
like wolves,
ready to pounce,
do their worst, gnaw
to the bone
a body deserving
no less for caving in
to being human
Regret is never
enough,
cannot ever
(quite) make amend
for any hurt caused,
by promises broken,
trust betrayed,
a dark side of Everyman
seeing to plans
haphazardly laid
Regret, for any
impulses
of the worst kind,
mind-body-spirit
long since redefined
by such
confessions as no one hears,
meant only for
the inner ear, and no one
to dry its tears
Regret, enemy-friend
nobody wants know,
teaching us,
ourselves, to know
Copyright R.
N. Taber 2019
Note: Frequently, and as recently as only
yesterday, a reader complains that I rarely insert full stops at the end of stanzas.
I offer no apologies. For me, full stops mark an ending, and a poem has none;
it does not even have meaning (for the reader) until he or she starts to take in whatever is meaningful about
the poem for them. and thinks on…
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