Puzzles. Puzzlers and Half-way Houses

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

It is a Bank Holiday weekend and half-term for schools here in the UK and many readers will be making the most of weather forecasts predicting high pressure in charge, so here’s a poem to (hopefully) help clear our heads of any its everyday puzzlers if only long enough to relax and ENJOY it. Indeed, I suspect there are many of us who are having to start learning all over again how to enjoy life altogether now the worst of the coronavirus crisis seems to be at least receding around the world in terms of hospital admissions and deaths.

Now, as regular readers well know, I may have a hearing problem but still manage to earwig conversations while out and about, whether shopping, on a train, in a queue… wherever; many of these provide the genesis for my poems.

The other day, I overheard a couple who were clearly in two minds about the gradual relaxation of pandemic restrictions here in the UK and across the world. “Obviously it’s good news, but who are we to believe and just how safe are we?” one was asking.

The other person was more philosophical. “It’s a bit of a muddle, that’s for sure, but when isn’t life a muddle? We just have to muddle along, make what sense we can of it, enjoy the good bits and try not to let the bad bits grind us down…”

They moved away and I was still deciding whether or not to buy a pizza or make a salad for lunch, but both points of view played on my mind all day; I could relate to either. The latter philosophical argument won the day for me, but the same reservations expressed by the first speaker continue to haunt mind-body-spirit. I suspect there are many worldwide who feel much the same way…

The entire Covid-19 experience has been both a physical and mental strain on all of us, one way or another, and we should not under-estimate the latter. Sadly, mental stress is perceived as a weakness by some people, although it is but part and parcel of human nature. Bottling up our worries, concerns, fears etc. can only do us harm, as I found out the hard way, resulting in a nervous breakdown some 40 years ago; if counselling is not an option for any reason, we can at least confide in someone close, family or friend, who is unlikely to be judgemental.

Simply putting our feelings into words can help us make sense of them and put the brakes on any potential mental decline.

PUZZLES, PUZZLERS & HALFWAY HOUSES 

I struggle daily to make sense
of a world around me that’s relying
more on New Technology
to provide home comforts, answer
questions the human brain
is left struggling to provide, for flaws
the mind-body-sprit combo
would prefer to keep hid from powers-that-be
hell bent on making history 

I do my best to offer reassurance,
bring any home comforts and joys I can
given pecuniary advantages
and disadvantages taking their toll
here, there, everywhere
I care to look, making of me but a book
left half-open, half read,
barely half-understood anxious for knowledge
to keep moving, limit carnage 

I’d have given up on all humanity
long, long ago, but for its innate capacity
for love, inclined to fall short
of its mark now and then, having to start
over again (and again)
but sufficient alternatives in shapes, sizes
and forms to try departing
from conventional ‘norms’ though half the world
likely to blame it on hormones 

Call me Earth Mother, left puzzling over such lives
as configure humanity, split on all sides 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2021