Mortality, a 'live' Canvas

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

As regular readers know, I have not been well for some time, not least due to  8+ years of being treated with hormone therapy for my prostate cancer. Lately, a venous ulcer hasn't helped and arthritis can always be relied upon to make matters worse. It's enough, sometimes, for even a do-or-die spirit like mine to wonder whether it has really been worth every heartbeat. The answer has to be 'yes' of course, misgivings notwithstanding. Lately, I have to confess to being somewhat preoccupied with the latter.

Having to buy a new computer and discovering how much of a dinosaur I am when it comes to matters I T, has finally driven home the fact that I will be 74 in December; no spring chicken, indeed. I find myself wondering what happened to the chicken and taking no small comfort and pleasure in the fact that he is still here to tell the tale in spite of a good roasting along the way. Yes, I could have done some, if not many things differently and better, but I didn't, so why let the benefit of hindsight plague me so? I haven't achieved a fraction of what I once hoped to achieve, and bitterly regret letting a mental breakdown in my 30's become the trigger for looking the world in the eye about my being gay. I should have been open about my sexuality years earlier, especially given that I had realised I am gay by the time I was 14 years-old in 1959...

Even so, I have enjoyed much of my life in my own way, and that has to count for something. More to the point, perhaps, I have learned a lot from some wonderful people who have - knowingly or unwittingly - been my mentors; in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. Hopefully, I, too, may have played my part in mentoring or at least encouraging others in making of themselves what they will, not what anyone else may have in mind for them by way of compensating for their own shortcomings. Self-awareness is one thing, remaining loyal to it in the face of everything (and everyone) that is meaningful in our lives, that's something else. Well, we can but try and that has to count for a lot too.

Every living thing dies, but what never dies is whatever good their their life has brought to someone else's. There may well be good and bad in all of us, but it is the good we need to focus on, the better part of any mentoring because it comprises all we leave behind that's worth the leaving, has been worth every heartbeat whoever we are; rich or poor, whatever our ethnicity, sex or sexuality, there is something about all of us that's helping to write up someone else' life long after mortality has claimed us for its own.

We may or may not choose to follow a path as laid down in tablets of stone, but the human spirit has a mind of its own; as I learned long ago, our differences do not make us different, only human, and  - more often than not - no less deserving of respect. There has been an outcry from some parents only recently about schools having to include LGBT issues on school curricula from next year. Now, the  majority of children and young people are probably the least judgemental members of any society; what is wrong in encouraging to stay that way? I am reminded of the title of a poem posted here some time ago, 'Whatever happened to Agreeing to Differ?'

MORTALITY, A 'LIVE' CANVAS

Time, like saliva on my chin,
mind and body losing momentum,
spirit doing its best
to keep up with a digital world
testing its strengths
and weaknesses daily, yet failing
to (quite) prevent
its capacity for imagination
finding purpose,
though its hold on motivation
losing its grip

Years, trying to catch me out;
the past, much like a walking stick
sustaining my balance
as I but lean on past pleasures
to find a way
through such present predicaments
as ganging up on me,
if only to undermine processes
of thought summoned
to resist  my being outmanoeuvred
by contemporaneity

An everlasting feeling for nature;
a future much like an autumnal mist
screening off any winter
of mind-body-spirit likely to kill off
the life forces
of its spring where sense and sensibility
turning no less
on nature's capacity for self-nurture
than any human interest
in growing things, cashing in on it,
climate notwithstanding

Come that certain moment in time
I exchange the vibrant colours of life
created by engaging
with a capacity for arts-sciences-sports
(whatever cap fits)
for a mortality that's still a blank sheet
despite all the shades
of love-hope-wishful thinking and despair
(for better, for worse)
imposed by various conventions,
underwritten by dogma

No blank sheet, the haunting enigma
we call mortality, our feeling for its poetry
bequeathed one and all
to make of it whatever as needs must
give mind-body-spirit
a fighting chance to rise above the worst
of negative thinking,
reinstate hope, give peace a fighting chance
to rise above our fears,
no tears left to stain the canvas
we leave behind

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2019