A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Wednesday, 9 September 2020

Spirit of Autumn

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

People often tell me they find autumn a sad month because it means winter is closing in, but as I have often pointed out on my blogsā€¦ after winter, spring.

Better, surely, to look forward to spring than dread winter? 

In the meantime, let us enjoy autumn for all its glorious colours and the sense of eternal optimism these are surely meant to inspire in us, an optimism that well may fail us from time to time...but, as my late mother once said, there is an eternal springtime of the loving, hopeful heart sure to inspire and help us through all the seasons of life, even the hardest of its winters...if we will but keep faith with it. When I pointed out that I was not a religious person, she simply responded to the effect that no religion has a monopoly on love and hope since we are all born with a potential capacity for both. How far we choose to apply it, she would argue, has more to do with human nature than religion. (My mother was a Christian, but like all the more remarkable religious-minded people, whatever their religion, she closed her heart and mind to no one.)

SPIRIT OF AUTUMN

Autumn leaves... 

Drifting by my window
like dreams I have nurtured
with love and care
in the garden of my life
where some flowered
in their season while others
were battered by wind and rain,
never to be seen again

Autumn leaves...

Whirling by my window
like dervishes in a frenzied
dance of life and death,
sustained by a rage to seize
the day, come what may,
on the battlefields of my life
where I have risked all to prove
a born capacity for love

Autumn leaves...

Clinging to my window
as Apollo clings to the last patch
of blue before sunset,
bids nature and human nature
rest on hard won laurels,
so-brief enough reprieve before
more rude awakenings to a world
falling on its sword

Autumn leaves...

Ripped from my window
like pages of memory best left
to whims of wind and rain
while I enjoy each dreamy leaf,
petal and blade of grass
found in the garden of my life
whose choirs heard singing each day
of my pride in being gay

Autumn leaves, tears of Earth Mother 
for any that cannot see beyond winter


Copyright R. N. Taber 2014; 2020

[Note: This post-poem also appears on my gay-interest blog today] RNT

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