Some Doors Never (Quite) Close OR Young Love, Old Love

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

Overheard in a local store recently: 

1^st MAN:  She’s only seventeen, so how can she know her own mind? I tell you, the boy’s trouble. I’ve told her to stay away from him, but... 

2^nd MAN: Kids, eh? So much to learn and so much they just don’t want to know... 

(Both men move away.) 

Now, I have no idea of the actual context of this conversation, having only caught a snippet, but it was enough to remind me that not only LGBT folks are up against traditional ideas, one of these being that young people don’t know their own minds. True, they have a lot to learn, but how to learn if they are not encouraged to do so? 

The vast majority of parents only want that is best for their children. For many parents, though, their children never (quite) grow up and/ or may well follow a different learning curve to the one their parents have in mind for them. Whatever, mulling over this snippet of conversation resulted (for better, for worse) in a poem. 

SOME DOORS NEVER (QUITE) CLOSE or YOUNG LOVE, OLD LOVE

There’s a love song
been running around in my head
all day, today
and most days since last we met,
said our goodbyes,
promised to meet up again soon;
only, it wouldn’t happen;
life would deal us more cruel blows
before we’d meet again 

I hear it in the wind
as I lie in my bed at night, dreaming
of you, wondering
where and how you are, recalling
all the plans we made
for a future with neither sorrow
nor pain to haunt us,
but love alone to see us through all life
may send to taunt us 

They meant us well,
both family and friends who warned
we were not meant
to be together, no birds of a feather,
you and I, but chalk
and cheese who could not hope
to ever realise our dreams
of a world that would gladly see its lovers
rise above its divisions 

Time passed, the same
song in my heart urging me to overcome
society’s resistance
to the you-me-us of years when we
thought of ourselves
as free to be together, no matter
how great the pain
as may well take us to task for going against
its traditional grain 

Give it time, they had said,
and we’d see the wisdom of advice given,
but my love, it lived on
in mind-body-spirit until I resolved
to seek you out,
take a chance on the feelings we had
making such choices
as we’d have made then, but told “too young"
by older, wiser voices 

Decision made, interrupted
by a knock on my door I hesitate to answer
for fear of losing the thread
of mind-body-spirit’s engaging me
with such home truths
as I’d been advised to put aside by those
wanting better for us
than what they could not even begin to consider
for themselves 

It was in something of a daze I opened the door
to find you smiling there...

 Copyright R. N. Taber 2021