Cascade

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

Today's post-poem is another from the blog archives (since removed) and first appeared here in 2013. Do explore the archives for yourselves as I will only be repeating a selection; they can be accessed on the right hand side of any blog page.

Some readers who link to my YouTube channel think 'too much' background noise detracts from the poems I read. While I take their point, it is unavoidable when filming outdoors with my (cheap) camcorder. There is no way to subdue all background noise without killing the reading. For me, reading outdoors brings the poem to life. Moreover, the location often relates to the poem. For example, I wanted to read Autobiography of a Beach where I began to write it, on Bournemouth beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKzi9VRjuq0&t=132s

Latterly, anyone who has ever dipped into my You Tube channel will have seen that I have started reading poems over the video, thereby reducing background distractions since I record the poem in the relative peace and quiet of my London flat. This appears to work quite well and I will probably do this in future.  I suspect it would have been better to start off this way, but my best friend (and cameraman) Graham and I are only amateurs and did not hit on the idea until we discovered that we had a growing audience. We intend to record more videos/poem later this year as and when time allows:

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

Meanwhile …

Someone close to me was a keen gardener and loved the seasons. When she lay in hospital dying, she told me not to be afraid. “There’s really nothing to be afraid of. Nervous, perhaps, but who isn’t nervous of change?  As for being afraid, though, no one with a passion for spring need ever be afraid of winter.”

CASCADE

Many a scary night, I'd stumble along

the lonely, winding passages of birth,

let moon, stars and love’s sweeter song

lure me into the killing fields of Earth

By history’s first light, I’d dried my tears

(said to make all who nurture us proud);

by noon, I’d joined a stream of refugees

fallen foul of some scapegoat of a God

In the twilight of my years, I found peace,

(yes, even in a world living with terror)

for letting a cascade of spring’s finer joys

absorb tears long shed for a bad winter

Come Death's free falling us back to nature,

a cascade of life forces minding us forever

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2013

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]