A (Covid) Season of the Heart

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

Another new post-poem today, although any message it manages to get across will sound very familiar to regular readers. Still, it has been my experience that anything worth saying is invariably worth repeating, especially as, like so many of us, passing years see to it that I am getting very forgetful, even more so when under the kind of stress this Covid-19 persists in imposing on us all. 

Years of hormone therapy since my prostate cancer was first diagnosed in 2011, not to mention growing older (I will be 75 soon) leave me feeling very tired and ready for bed by around 9.30-10 pm most nights, whatever the time of year. Autumn, though, as nature and human nature braces for winter, brings with it a curious kind of fatigue, one tempered with a sense of expectation that things will get better come springtime, and it’s just a question of bearing the burden of winter with fortitude rather than despair; not unlike sleeping off a nasty headache. 

Most of us are familiar with ‘the old saying, ‘Where here’s life, there’s hope; a teacher at my old school had his own version of that, slightly but significantly amended to ‘Where there are life forces, there is hope.’ 

Nature goes quiet in winter, but it does not die; any life forces passing into oblivion, will most likely be regenerated come springtime; beneath the very wintry earth we tread, there are seeds awaiting their cue to wake and grow. It has been my experience, for many years, that much the same can be said for the human condition; mind-body-spirit may appear to be asleep sometimes, less active on our behalf, but it is only sleeping and will invariably take its cue to engage with us more positively again as needs must it should, if not always as and when we might prefer. 

Sometimes, there is nothing for it but we have to play a waiting game; similarly, it would seem, with the coronavirus.

Many people agree that love never dies, but even they will concede that as loved ones die, our love for them that endures in personal space cannot compensate for their physical presence. I agree, but that is where a belief in the posthumous consciousness comes into its own; as regular readers know, I believe in ghosts and their presence in and all around us, as forming part of our whole by way of their influence for the better in the course of both their lifetimes and ours. 

I can close my eyes and see them, hear them advising and comforting me as they have always done, especially during hard times … can’t you?  

This poem is a villanelle.

A (COVID) SEASON OF THE HEART 

Covid, on an autumnal breeze,
nature, all but ready for its winter sleep,
birds departing first-home trees 

Leaves, tears of one who grieves,
among rustlings of promises yet to keep;
Covid, on an autumnal breeze 

Apollo, no less anxious to please,
assuring us another spring we’ll yet reap,
birds departing first-home trees 

Drawing on a stoicism of centuries,
Hope on humanity, its blessings shall heap;
Covid, on an autumnal breeze 

Come winter, nature’s worst injuries
restored anew, though we hear not a peep;
birds departing first-home trees 

There’s a spirituality in autumn leaves,
cue for human hearts, joie-de-vivre to keep;
Covid, on an autumnal breeze,
birds departing first-home trees

Copyright R N Taber 2020