Harvest Home

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

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (On the death of his wife, Joy)

“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.” - ~ Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations Poétiques

“She (Dorothea) was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with It as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”  George Eliot, Middlemarch

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.” – Thucydides

A neighbour commented: “I never met the Queen, never knew her except as a smiling, graceful figure reaching out to me from the TV. Yet, I feel as if I have lost a dear friend. Silly of me, I know…” 

Not silly at all. I suspect many of us are feeling a similar sense of loss, and as we pause to wonder why, we may well discover some answers to questions we all ask of ourselves.

The legacy of the late Queen Elizabeth II is, indeed, immeasurable in so far as it embraces a truly global consciousness. Mixed feelings, indeed, nor any greater than a sense of losing someone while, at the same time, wanting to celebrate their life.

HARVEST HOME

I am the world that turns
on an axis separate from all others,
yet as much a part
of a common humanity as the air
we breathe in order
to gift me to mind-body-spirit,
for planting and nurturing
what motivates this, my being baring all
to save a heart-and-soul

I can sing and dance, show
myself to the world, by way of urging
we celebrate the gift of life,
whose seed freely given in peace
and love, grown, nurtured,
harvested in such seasons of time
and personal space as begs
we pause to watch, listen, learn, take heart
from a truly indomitable spirit

Where the going is as tough
as it gets, be sure I’ll be there for you,
if not always understood;
feel free to rummage, no damage
done that cannot mend;
though my harvesting yield only pain
and tears of want and fear
,be sure, needs must you explore new worlds
beyond boundaries set by words

I am those feelings by way of which humanity
writes that epic poem we call ‘Eternity’

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2022

 

Love, Enduring

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A reader, S. J. asks why I often write poems about love when I live alone. Well, what has living alone to do with out capacity for love? As I have said in the past on the blogs, love comes in all shapes and forms, including a posthumous consciousness wherein any love we ever had for anyone who has passed away never ceases to be the subject and object of our feelings, continues to keep them very much alive and kicking. Places, animals, and events we have loved sharing with others... these, too,  will often help revive flagging spirits, courtesy of our feeling for happy memories. 

The same reader suggests that my poems are become "somewhat repetitive" given that "there is only so much a poem can say about anything, including love..." while kindly adding that he enjoys many of them anyway. Hopefully, other readers feel much the same way. He has a point, of course and I try to avoid substantial repetition, but a long-running battle against various medical issues (including depression) means I am not always at my best some days. The inner strength I take from writing poems is just about all that sustains me some days, that and the everlasting of love, in all its shapes and forms.

So what happens if and when memory fades? As someone whose mother has dementia recently told me, "Love is always a part of us and its power will always shine through, no matter the details might become somewhat sketchy..." Our feeling for them never fades.

Oh, and I am delighted to say that recent feedback suggests that a significant number of readers have started to explore the blog archives; many of the poems there have been revised.

Meanwhile...

LOVE, ENDURING

In the ways of love,
I embrace the platonic kind,
no less a treasure
than any other come to marry
with a like human mind
for better, for worse, in sickness and health,
till death us do part 

Yet, death shall not part us,
for that other 'virtual' existence
we call memory,
allowing us face-time whenever
the need arises
to revisit  a sharing of such frank confidences
as only intimates know 

Nor does sex have a monopoly
on such home comforts as laughing
at bad jokes, the worse
for a vulgarity only like minds enjoy,
no offence taken,
only a sure appreciation of life partners in crime,
though death us do part 

The beauty of love, in all its shapes
and forms, lies in its needing no words
to express and share
the focus of its attention, sounding out
and empathising
with any posthumous consciousness (still) nurturing
such seeds as saw it flower 

In shades of intimacy as envisaging all love enduring,
find the mind-body-spirit everlasting 

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2021

[Note: The final couplet in this poem has been slightly, but significantly revised since it first appeared on the blog.] RT

Time and Tide

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The genesis for this poem was written in 1976. I have only recently revised it.

Regular reader will be familiar with the sea – in all its moods, and as they reflect my own - as a theme for many later poems.

Sometimes, the sea inspires me; sometimes it comforts me; sometimes it scares me, especially as I grow old(er) and am inclined to see it as a living metaphor for a splendid vastness that will surely (for good or ill, better or worse) one day claim my spirit.

TIME AND TIDE

The lonely sea
laps at my feet, stars in the sky
small comfort;
on a hushed beach,
a huge white moon winks wryly
at me

Sun, sea, sand,
slipping through weepy fingers
like kinder times;
life, death, love,
hovering low above, still waiting
for Godot

Wind grown cold,
I growing old with all the stoicism
of a sand statue;


night-pools, they swirl
around me, surprise, confound me
with home truths

Though I dare
a sleepy shore’s passions reawaken,
I know…
why the lonely sea
laps at my feet,  stars in the sky
small comfort

Copyright R. N. Taber 2001; 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in  Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000.]

A Feeling For Love-Hate Relationships

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Some readers may be interested to know that a new serial begins on my fiction blog today. Sacrilege was first published in the UK in 2008 and is Book Two in a planned trilogy Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption. [Book Three has been delayed through illness but I hope to finish writing it in time to serialise it on the blog next year before publishing the entire trilogy as e-editions on Google Play.]

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com

Meanwhile…

Can we really love and hate at the same time? I think so, yes. Some people (and places) make us SO mad sometimes, yet we love them to bits.

I hate London much of the time, especially these days as it is so overcrowded, yet I miss it as a lover misses his or her partner whenever I am away for long.  Certainly, too, I have discovered it is possible to hate certain people almost as much as loving them. They are weighty words, love and hate. I suspect we use them too freely in the course of everyday conversation, indeed as we journey through life.

There are even more abstract forms of love hate-relationships, too, which nonetheless have a bearing on our lives; we may well prefer to avoid them, but such is our need for them that we have little or no choice but to engage with them now and then. Mind you, any thanks for their timely intervention is likely to be more than a shade mixed with resentment for our feeling  unable to resists engaging with them at all; much the same principle applies to many if not most love-hate relationships turn…

This poem is a kenning.

A FEELING FOR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIPS

Oh, but I will always try
to be there for you whenever
I am needed,
keep my distance when it feels
more appropriate,
listen whenever you need an ear,
and support you
where the heart makes a pitch
for centre-stage

Oh, but I will always try
to look into your head should
you turn against me
in the intense heat of emotions
setting themselves
against us (for whatever reason)
descending to a wintry chill
and left unacknowledged between
cracks in thin ice

Oh, but I will always try
to bring you gently down to earth
when fine ideals fly
in the face of temporal priorities
primed to shoot down
any aspirations of a human spirit
likely to blow a hole
in the arms budget, and give peace
a fighting chance

Agreed cover for home truths and lies,
I pass for the Spirit of Compromise

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

Thought, Last Seen Hanging By A Thread

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A new poem today.

Sometimes if not mostly, a thought is an inarticulate or partially formed feeling; follow it through, and who knows where it may take us...? Whatever, it is sure to put us in in touch with something; an idea, a passion even or simply an awareness that we would have preferred not to acknowledge ... perhaps for fear we might not be up to it?

THOUGHT, LAST SEEN HANGING BY A THREAD

Hear me crying out to humanity,

hanging by its every word

of bigotry, betrayal, hypocrisy,

in socio-cultural-religious

dispute over how its will be done

for the greater good of its own

where children with hungry eyes

despair of salvation in this life

or any next, mothers worn down

by weeping for men folk taken

off to fields of battle that will yield

no harvest but more of the same

Watch me dying for humanity

like a last leaf turning yellow

among sad branches of a history

once green and strong, ringing

out a message of peace and love

and believing every word said,

in promises made, even signed for,

while a robin’s song in winter

about spring being next on nature’s

agenda for us all is drowned out

by socio-cultural-religious ranting

raking over more of the same

Save me from poor humanity’s

petty squabbles in this or that

corridor of power, on this podium,

that pulpit, whatever...

Don’t let me hang for every word

of do-gooder speak ever uttered

in monologue, dialogue, preaching

to the hopeful or the hopeless

(as its case may be) but rise above

attempts to make us slaves

in someone else’s dream most likely

to mean even more of the same

Fly with me for humanity’s sake;

sing with birds, nest in trees,

watch the young and teach the art

of survival in a world

where all that’s natural takes pride

in the integrity of identity,

humility, selflessness, sexuality,

and other fine qualities

commonly human but often put down

by socio-cultural-religious fears

that any change means loss of face, 

preferring more of the same

Don’t leave me crying for humanity,

hanging by its every word ... 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012