The Zen of Window Cleaning

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

Now and then (probably not often enough) we pause to take stock of our lives. Sometimes we may find that life wanting. 

So, what then?  How many of us actually do something about it rather than shrug it off with that much abused saying, ‘That’s life…’? 

Whatever, the human condition has a native capacity for picking itself up, dusting itself down and starting over…

Ah, yes, but for how long before the global warming humankind has engineered over centuries, with precious little thought for the natural world, catches up with and turns on us, its perpetrators?

Time, methinks, to think again, stop wailing about what might happen and pointing fingers of blame, but DO something to make damage limitation a priority NOW.

THE ZEN OF WINDOW CLEANING

Love, more than a word

to tide us over,

but a window on a world

running for cover

Left, trails of broken ties

comprising loose ends

pointing to familiar places

and old friends

Time, hands on the clock

we mistake for real,

blaming vagaries of luck

on the turn of its wheel

Word and world in danger,

(bad dreams on cue)

fuelling an impotent anger

ever clouding our view

Nature, its Here-and-Now

for the asking, deserves

better than we scheme how

to raid its finer treasures

Humanity, a tragi-comedy

of errors, failing to learn

from history, its complicity

overdue a spring clean

Life, ever picking us all up,

and dusting us all down,

trusting (in vain?) we'll start

listening to the rain

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2020

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the same title in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time, Assembly Books, 2005.]