Love Letters in an Attic

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

A reader, J C has emailed to suggest I publish too many love poems on the blog and need to "get real about life." Well, any readers for whom love is not a reality has my sympathy.  Besides, I suspect most of us have hade our fill of having to 'get real during the pandemic. Me, I live alone, but the loves I have known in my life - in all shapes and forms - have saved me time and again from sinking into loneliness and despair.  

Once engaged in, the spiritual experience of love never dies, albeit may well reside in that part of us we reserve for our favourite memories; it can be a person, a place, a pet... whatever. (Yes, I know I have said this before, and probably will again; whatever J. .C may think, the blog is about life and the forces that not only help define us, but see us through thick and thin... of which the strongest and most influential has to be love, surely?

Happy memories can make us sad, but only if we let them rather than be not only comforted, but inspired. by them. No happy memory can ever be repeated or replaced; happiness, though, can be repeated  - time and again - in various scenarios as we pass through the seasons of life;  it is a common mistake, though, to compare what or whom has made us happy with whatever or whomsoever may yet make us happy again. 

Time passes, the world changes, and so do we. Even so, if  happy times have helped make us who we are now, who are we to deny our future the same opportunity? 

Brooding on the loss of happy times is only natural, but we risk losing sight of even those; a counsellor once advised me  - in the course of my having a nervous breakdown some years ago - that the trick is to harness the spirit of happy times and let it move us on, leaving nothing and no one behind whose part in our lives not only endures, but having shown us happy times may well do so again... if we let it...

LOVE LETTERS IN AN ATTIC

Wings of a dove
trailing us, centuries
of pain, love;
many tears shed,
taken as read;
so, glides our history,
Time's passage;
all sadness forsworn,
(for the most part)
any madness forgiven,
mind-body-spirit
bravely moving on,
accompanied only
by thoughts and desires
of the tender kind,
nor leaving anything
no, nor anyone 
behind

Such feelings!
Caress me, thrill me,
enduring bird,
each faded quill,
a tender word;
our love and laughter,
 a symphony,
ever inspiring us,
cheering us on,
we lovers pairing;
twin doves,
winging personal space,
deserving far more
than these outpourings
like acid rain
bent on
having me lose you
yet again

World turning,
moving us on through
 a personal space
as only love inspires;
no boundaries,
just a continuum
wherein we run
a gamut of life forces
letting us win some,
lose some,
but all the while sending
 messages of hope
(defiance, too)
challenging us to see
life through,
the wiser
for having known
each other

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2001; rev. 2021

[Note: This poem was written in 1993, first published in my collection, Love and Human Remains by  R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001; revised, 2021.] RT