You-Me-Us, Lifesaver

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

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.” – Anne Frank

“In all things, it is better to hope than to despair.” - Goethe

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Naruda

As the war in Ukraine escalates, news came through yesterday of Russian forces bombing a children's and maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has declared it a war crime.

Meanwhile the flow of despairing people struggling to flee Ukraine in freezing conditions continues with Russian forces persistently ignoring ceasefires.

At home, and across the world, we can but watch, aghast that this could happen in 2022 while, many of us still suffering both mental and physical effects of having to cope with the coronavirus. The situation in Ukraine may well seem a whole lot worse, but Covid-19 has brought despair to many and despair is despair is despair; to the despairing individual, it is as immeasurable as it is indescribable.

In this life (as many, including yours truly, can testify) when standing still is no option, looking back on kinder times is often the only life force available to spur us into moving forward, less with regret for their absence than in a spirit of celebration and hope.

YOU-ME-US, LIFESAVER

In the eyes of sadness
there is only one thing to do,
pluck a cloud
from the sky and hitch a ride
through time,
to wherever mind-body-spirit
has a whim to revisit,
put a smile on the face of a Here-and-Now
that’s forgotten how

There are old friends,
we used to know before our years
took us places
we didn’t always want or choose
to go...
when we’d laugh and play games.
exchange party hats
and silly names, listen wide-eyed to fairy tales,
fly with nightingales

There are special people,
with whom we’d enjoy special moments,
whose genial ghosts
never fail to cheer the soul that’s lost,
taken a wrong turning,
needing to be put right, helped to lighten
the load it bears,
redirected to some far kinder thought process
than ends in tears

Playful pets, too, recalled
to perform such lively acts as likely to warm
a heart grown cold,
for loneliness, grief or on discovering old age
no ‘true-to-life’ movie
here Happy-Ever-After as likely as not to win
Oscar nominations all round,
no dry eyes in the audience, bur tears
of delight, no fears

Ah, many the comfortable
and pleasurable zone we need to make our own.
as and when
we can, and best not delayed as any tomorrow
may yet bring sorrows
enough to urge a saddened eye but open wide,
steer a passing cloud
through as lively a stream of shared consciousness
as You-Me-Us

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022