http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Another new poem today, just when I didn’t think I had
another poem in me … and not for the first time either.
The coronavirus has been with us for months now and
there are signs Covid-19 that the stress is taking its toll on everyone.
Lately, I have heard the following statements from different people along the
lines that “I really can’t take any more …” and “I sometimes wake up in the
morning and wish I was dead …” I know
the feeling, I really do; I will be 75 later this year, live alone and hormone
therapy for my prostate cancer affects my thought processes as well as my
memory with the effect that, among other things, I panic easily.
A few months ago, my best friend Graham and I visited a
certain village in Essex for the first time; it is a charming place. I was
feeling tired and low at the time, but the village itself manifested such a
delightful atmosphere that it cheered me immensely. We needed to take a footpath
through the local churchyard; a whispering in the trees could easily have been
voices of the dead urging me to be glad just to be alive and make the most of
each day as it comes.
I had been feeling low, Suddenly, I felt altogether
different, mood lifting and various life forces (including creative forces) coming
into play; all mind-body-spirit, regenerating.
Needless to say, we have returned to the same village
several times since.
That is how I came to write the poem; hopefully
readers will take heart from it, as I did even as I was writing it; I was back
in the village, far away from that dark place the coronavirus had dumped me in.
SUNLIGHT ON A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD or MEMO FROM
APOLLO
Summoned
by a breeze
to
enter a country churchyard
while
simply passing by;
pausing
for thought, agreeing to comply
without
quite knowing why,
yet
sensing an urgency, pounding
at
all sense and sensibility
as
if some human spirit had chosen me
to
set it free
Following
feisty leaves
fallen
from proud oaks forming
a
Guard of Honour
on
either side of a gravel path from gate
to
church door,
urged
by whisperings I cannot explain
to
take a right turn,
wander
among the graves
until
(finally) called upon to stop, look, listen
and
pay attention
My
eyes, they are drawn
to
a headstone nearby, its wording
ravaged
by time,
yet
I can just make out dates below a name
and
parts of a poem
more
critical of than favouring a person
Death
dared presume
to
steal away a good few years before their time,
so
reads the poem
Highlighted
by brilliant rays
of
sunshine chasing dark clouds above,
the
poem is as if rewritten
all
words (and meaning) made clear and plain
to
a certain someone
grown
as war weary of life as with time,
death
almost welcome
Apollo
now whispering in my ear, “Rise and Shine”
for
the grave is mine
In
a blaze of light, love and glory
Apollo
goes on his way, as I awake at dawn
from
a hazy, crazy dream,
no
less scary than beautiful, as meant to frighten
as
reassure, enlighten
by
way of a mind-body-spirit not yet given
its
all, to why no time
like
the Here-and Now to enter nature’s own view,
nurture
a whole life through
I
reached up for my diary on an oaken bedside shelf
and
wrote, “Lost and Found, one true self … “
Copyright
R.N. Taber 2020
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