Sunlight on a Country Churchyard OR Memo from Apollo

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