http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
As I
continue putting together a new collection of poems, this one caught my eye; it
first appeared on the blog in 2011.
People
often ask me why I write poetry. I try to answer this in many of my love poems.
Although the love of my life died many years ago and we had only a few years
together, our love for each other continues to sustain me. Yet, as I often say
to people living alone as I do, love comes in many shapes and forms; family,
friends, pets, places...all these can be loved and become an integral part of
not only our lives but also our whole being.
In my
case, my relationship with friends and nature are the focus of my love,
and subsequently my love for poetry; the latter, by the way, is a gift from my
dear mother who would often recite poems to me at bedtime as well as reading me
stories. She died in June 1976 when I was 30 years-old, but I feel her presence
whenever I write a poem just as I feel my late partner’s and others I have
loved. Yes, there is sadness in me because I will never see them again, but
that is more than compensated for and transcended by love...every day of every
year.
Years ago, I wrote a gay love poem which, sadly, I have since mislaid as it
predated the age of computers and am unable to rewrite as I have a poor memory
after years of hormone therapy for my prostate cancer. At the time, a colleague
urged me to submit it to a poetry magazine whose editor subsequently commended
me for my efforts while rejecting it on the grounds that gay love poems lack
integrity and might well offend regular readers.
Love comes in all shapes and forms and is as changeable as the seasons, in
nature and human nature alike; like every season, it gives new life in one
breath and takes with another while encouraging us to be be glad for what we
have, and make the best of it, rather then dwell on what we have not, and make
the worst.
True love is more than eternal, it is eternity, that you-me-us
that has characterised human life since its earliest beginnings, and always
will. Nor does any culture or religion have a monopoly on its spirituality; the
human spirit in us all will see to that, if we will but let it, whoever and
wherever we may be.
This poem is a villanelle.
I-N-T-E-G-R-I-T-Y,
LOVE POEMS
In love
poems, discern integrity
touching
on all life's finer themes;
the
ultimate collector's anthology
Any prose
on contemporaneity
may well
rip us apart at the seams;
in
love poems, discern integrity
Where
some see cruel ambiguity,
love
lends out its promising dreams;
the
ultimate collector's anthology
There's a
cruelty rooted in bigotry,
humanity
but a patch on all it seems;
in love
poems, discern integrity
Natural
world allowed its dignity,
till
Earth Mother's face surely beams;
the
ultimate collector's anthology
Come age, gender, race, sexuality,
prejudices
(still) haunting our dreams;
in love
poems, discern integrity,
the
ultimate collector's anthology
Copyright R. N. Taber 2012, rev. 2020
[Note: An
earlier version of this poem appears under the title' Love, an Epic Poem'
in Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books,
2012; this post/ poem also appears on my gay-interest poetry blog today.]