Progress, Bitter-Sweet

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

Now, can we honestly call the rape of our forests and woodlands…progress?

Humankind needs to balance its own humanitarian needs with the needs of nature to help sustain them. If we are not careful, nature will get the upper hand sooner rather than later, destroy us before we can destroy it or even ourselves.

Whatever, to the victor, the spoils as the march of today’s Titans of big business and entrepreneurial skulduggery proceeds all but unchallenged...

PROGRESS, BITTER-SWEET

Shadows gathering
like crowds for an execution;
storm clouds rumbling
like a malediction on the planet
challenging us to bow out
here and now or put things right
(if it's not already too late)
to bequeath our children a future
in harmony with nature

In a spotlight of sunshine,
luminous corn circles invoking
the mystery of eternity,
human parts all but played out,
hearts put to rout,
hounded by a native savagery
plaguing the purer, simpler,
beauty of a common humanity
haunted by its history

‘Progress’ a bitter-sweet victory
over an earthly vulnerability

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002, 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in the Poetry Now [Forward Press] anthology series, London and Home Counties (2001) and subsequently in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]

Human Spirit, Battle Cry OR Who's Counting the Petals?

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

Sometimes I despair of the world we live in. (Well, don’t you?) But despair never did anyone any good so, no matter how high the odds stacked against success, we have to try and stay positive.

True, it's never easy…

As I have said before - and dare say will continue repeating myself (as I often do) - if we can’t change the world, we can at least try and improve our own little corner of it, and trust that the ripples any change for the better make…will spread.

HUMAN SPIRIT, BATTLE CRY or WHO'S COUNTING THE PETALS?

Floods here, drought there, swollen bellies;
refugees from civil wars pleading aid;

terror taking place on our own TVs, world

rising above its being afraid

So what are the world’s governments doing?

All they can, we’re expected to believe,

so why tragic images we’re seeing of a world
wearing its heart on its sleeve?

Where horror hits hardest, a hurt laid bare;

beyond headlines, inconceivable pain;

where flowers at gravesides, petals like tears
for those battling to move on

Cash (still) flowing freely for wars, elections,

Big Business politics for generations ...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004;2018

[Note: A slightly different version of this poem appeared in a 2004 issue of CC&D magazine, Scars (US) publications and subsequently in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]