Poems By Passing Clouds & The Challenge (2 poems)

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

I posted a ‘Cloudscape’ video on You Tube yesterday and read one of my ‘cloud’ poems (The Challenge) over it: http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

As I only posted The Challenge here in February, I am repeating another ‘cloud’ poem that has not appeared on the blog since 2010.

Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK. Here’s hoping that if you love clouds even half as much as I do, you will enjoy these poems…

POEMS BY PASSING CLOUDS

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear

and even beasts and birds

never learn the words,

can but live by the descant

of hungry young in spring,

butterfly wings in summer,

falling leaves in autumn winds

bin bag puppies in winter

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear,

no matter that humankind

imposes its own lyrics

(poor carbon copies passing

for popular reflections in

some subway busker’s eye)

sure to become global classics

since they make people cry

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear,

will never let on they know

or beast and bird give up

on a world that humankind

likes to make out it knows

but dare not face the wind

with its, oh, so pathetic untruths,

lyrics sure to blow the mind

There’s a song in the wind

only the trees ever hear

about nature’s secret ways;

life, death, misadventure,

why it’s the good die young

more often than not, while

the old pressure the rest of us

not to forget long-ago, kinder days

but take a leaf from the trees

There’s a song in every tree

running rings around history

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010. 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010; slightly rev. 7/19]

 THE CHALLENGE

There is a bridge between clouds

where we pause

who ponder on the purpose

on living just to die,

where the spirit unfulfilled,

the heart strayed

across certain boundaries society

has imposed (conventions)

so much the better to disguise

its worst intentions

There is a bridge between clouds

where we pause

who ask why the world below

has let us down…or did we

let ourselves and each other down

in the end

for never ceasing to demand more

than our fair share

of whatever peace and love

to be found there?

There is a bridge between clouds

where we’ll wait

our turn to cross…or be left

wishing deeds undone,

words unsaid, lies left creeping

under the tongue,

never to see the cold light of a day

when we must answer

to all its invidious shadows

may have heard us say

We can but cross, we children of Earth,

rise to the challenge of life over death

Copyright R. N. Taber 1984; 2010