You-Me-Us, Ring of Bells

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

Every day is an anniversary for those who have lost loved ones in times of war or peace. 

Let us also remember (again, not just today) those who are fighting and/ or campaigning to help make our world a safer, kinder place.

Ironically, many of our political and religious leaders (not to mention the arms dealers)  continue to make world peace a vain hope, the discrepancy between what they say and what they do growing wider each day, creating a bottomless pit for we ordinary men, women and children in the streets of just about any place in the world to drop into even as we go about our everyday lives. Ah, but we need to do just that, whatever else is going on in the world, or terrorism and its threat - in all its various shapes and clever socio-cultural-political-religious disguises - will surely win.

Nothing can beat being with a loved one, and losing them is painful beyond imagination. Yet, love never really dies. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am a passionate believer in a posthumous consciousness wherein love remains first among equals all our lives; in our death, who knows ... ? 

Whatever, love does not only embrace its lovers, but sends out ripples among all those  with whom we have contact in life - whether it be close or in passing - touching even complete strangers to us, with whom we may have engaged in brief conversation and (knowingly or unknowingly) made some reference to love that (to their conscious knowledge or not) may have some bearing on how they live their lives  thereafter ... such is its incredible momentum and continuum.

YOU-ME-US, RING OF BELLS

There is a wood
where we played as children
and bluebells grow

When you came home
after seeing the rape of Zimbabwe
we picked bluebells

When you came home
from the killing fields of Iraq
we picked bluebells

When you came home
from the poppy fields of Afghanistan
we picked bluebells

When you came home
telling of monks beaten in Tibet
we picked bluebells

When you came home
from the line of fire on the Gaza Strip
it was in a coffin

There is a wood
where time always keeps us safe
and bluebells grow

Copyright R N Taber 2010

[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears under the title 'Where No Bells Toll' in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]