N-A-T-U-R-E, Imaging Eternity aOR Transcending Known Parameters

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

It seems to me that we often overlook the simpler pleasures of life in our enthusiasm for the more exotic or whatever is most likely to impress family, peers and neighbours. A friend once commented, ‘We never know long we’ve got so all the more reason to cram in as much as we can while we can.’ I get that, but not everyone is a crammer; we all want different things from life and just because someone does not appear to have a lot to show for his or her life doesn’t mean they have not live it, in their own wat and time, to the full.

Now, every so often, someone asks me why I often write about death. Well, as a positive thinker, I try to be as positive about the inevitability of death as I do about making the most of each day as it comes, no matter what it may bring. Besides, I have been living with prostate cancer for nearly six years now so shying away from death is not an option. Not that I have any intention of letting the Grim Reaper have his way with me just yet! (Better to be positive, surely?)

It has been suggested by those who do not know me very well that I should ‘find God’ and therefore need have no fear of death. They mean well, of course, but I have never been able to relate to any religion or idea of a personified ‘God’. Nor am I am an atheist, though, but more of an agnostic in as much as I do believe in a sense of spirituality that enhances our customised vision of the world; outwardly and inwardly. However, as regular readers well know, I take that sense of spirituality from nature, not religion.

Oh, and why, too, do I have a particular fondness for robins? Well, not least because they are survivors, known to see out the worst winters if only to sing in another spring, reminding us all that, of all nature’s gifts, hope has to be among the best on offer. (And should hope die in some bleak winter of the heart? Well, as spring follows winter so, too, perhaps might we…?) 

Such is a sense of spirituality as I see it or if you prefer, the Landscape of Imagination from which so much of my poetry takes its inspiration, both mutually inclusive in my view.

N-A-T-U-R-E, IMAGING ETERNITY or TRANSCENDING KNOWN PARAMETERS

No one ever lays flowers,
comes even to rework old times,
but an old tree reads poems
that passes for a fitting eulogy,
and a robin sings

No memorial marks the spot,
none have cause to pause this way,
but shadows make a play
for life at Apollo’s pleasure,
and seeds grow

Each of four winds has a say
in how the tree needs must recite;
leafy branches acting out
rhythm, rhyme, blank verse,
(all weathers)

Mark how seasons play a part,
anticipating nature’s every mood,
overseeing a predilection
for happy-sad shades of green,
amber, red and mould

No let-up by day or night,
the tree passing on its every nuance
of sight and sound to each man,
woman and child with any feeling
for the natural world

Nature may well see us through
time’s ever-changing kaleidoscope,
yet humanity has far more say
than any leaves in what patterns
it may shape us…?

Ah, but such is human nature,
it may yet branch out on leafy whim
to make, break, let rise or fall
such passions of the human heart
as a robin sings
  
Roger N. Taber (2016)

A Job Half Done OR Planet of the Apes

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Have you ever began working on something you don’t really believe in, but felt you had no choice... so  puting any finishing touches to the task in hand was never really on the cards?  You may well have fought against it, given that many if not most of us are inclined to do whatever for a quiet life especially if it means being nagged to get on with it. Yet, at the end of the day, it is not certain people who persist in nagging at us but the lack of those very finishing touches itself; it leaves us feeling not only dissatisfied with our work, but also questioning our resistance to properly completing the job in the first place...so much so sometimes that we find ourselves, if not coming round to that to same point of view with which we found ourselves at loggerheads, at least able to enter into it, grasp something of where it was coming from - to the extent, more often than not, that we cannot leave the job unfinished if only because our hearts tell us it's the right thing to do, even if we are never quite sure why.

Oh, we may choose to put it all down to pride in a job well done, but at heart we may well suspect it is more than that; whether or not we choose to look any further, though, that is down to a sense of conscience we may or may not prefer to own; it is in the latter wherein lies a job but half done, and likely to nag us for the best part of a lifetime...although if it means we never stop asking questions - of ourselves and humanity in general - it may not be such a bad thing after all...

‘What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.’ – Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

A JOB HALF DONE or PLANET OF THE APES

Builder, pondering

a job half done, frowning

under a baseball cap...

(So , what he’s looking at?)

Eco-warriors, armed

with principles in defence 
of treasured open spaces
being eroded by developers
reaping the rewards
of feeding bricks and mortar
to human apes homing in

on concrete jungles, parodies
of natural worlds

Builder, pondering

a job half done, distant grin

under a baseball cap…

(So what's he’s looking at?)

Not scaffolding  

for brand new offices meant

to keep fat cats happy

once staff won over to the view

that a bird in the hand

is worth two in any hedgerow,

and he should know

with a wife, three kids, behind

with the mortgage

Builder at work

on a job half done, furrows

under a baseball cap…

(Now what’s he looking at?)

Towers, like trees, in skies

where birds fly like toy airplanes
and drop like skydivers

on the backs of eco-warriors

guarding nature’s own

from fat cats on the make

that don’t care, can walk away.

a job well done. time to move on 
to the next land grab

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2014

[Note: revised (2014) from an earlier version that appears under the title A Job Half Done in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]

A Winter Canvas

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Winter can be as incredibly harsh as it can be incredibly beautiful. Such is life, and human nature. Art may well do its very best to interpret and record, but it can only ever be one interpretation of one particular moment in time…

 Claude Monet - Snow at Argenteuil (1875)

A WINTER CANVAS

Straggly trees against a snowy sky,
robin redbreast in low key,
snowflakes like angels drifting by,
no more idea of what they’re doing,
where they’re going (or why)
than those of us down here, eagerly
lapping up the weather forecast
though for no particular reason other
than everyone else will be doing
much the same thing so there’s sense
of sorts in a camaraderie, missing
in our everyday lives, though friends,
and family do their best to assuage
our loneliness and poor self-esteem
where we can’t help comparing
ourselves with neighbours who seem
to be doing very nicely, thank you,
while we’re but getting nowhere fast
like the poor weather forecaster
always trying to convince us better
days are just ahead.

Robins singing, angel voices asking
why we’re all running around
in God’s backyard like headless chickens,
world chasing its own tail after Peace
(its Holy Grail), politicians rallying
worn phrases tried and tested
(if only for election clout) while the rest
of us rest on laurels as sure as winter
while glossing over its threatening skies
with talk of spring, change, everything
turning out better (if not best) when all's
said, done, leaving the astute artist
to gloss over any doubts with canvases
celebrating the bright and beautiful,
inspiring generations, in turn, to look,
listen, maybe even learn a thing or two
about life, love, nature and how art
copies more, far more, than what it sees
if only because beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, discern subtler differences
for better, for worse

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2013

[Note: an earlier version of this poem appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005]

Patchwork

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

Today's poem last appeared on the blog in 2008. Some readers may care to see/hear me read it among others on various themes on the 4^th plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square in July 2006 as part of Antony Gormley’s One and Other ‘living sculpture’ project for which 2400 people from all walks of life in the UK were invited to ‘do their own thing’ for one hour 24/7 over 100 days. The entire web-stream is now archived in the British Library and this is my contribution. Some readers have asked if I can send them a CD, but Sky Arts refused to let any of the participants have one so anyone who may want to watch it again needs to make a note of the link:

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T - [For now, at least, this link needs the latest Adobe Flash Player  and works best in Firefox; the archives website cannot run Flash but changes scheduled for later this year may well mean the link will open without it. Ignore any error message and give it a minute or so to start up. The video lasts an hour. ] RT 3/18

  

Surely, there are few sights more encouraging or reassuring than to watch this sorry world of ours close down rather splendidly if a trifle disturbingly and only temporarily, of course...as if inviting us to do the same?

PATCHWORK

Dusk, a patchwork quilt spread

over trees and meadows’

warren, set, foxhole, well hid

from prying eyes

Late birds on slight, misty wing

heading for the nest;

walkers, ramblers, hastily

checking compasses

Children at play looking out

for text messages;

Middle England, on the edge

of things temporal

Green campaigners counting

hard won laurels;

curtain closing on one last peep

at a hazy beauty

Tasting raw smells of earthiness

and buttermilk sky;

empathy with a nightingale’s

plea to be left in peace

Random stars brought down,

like clay pigeons

by bonfires in back gardens

always taking liberties

Bats, alley cats, all putting a shine

on the Sandman’s boot

whose task to get us ready

for the next clay shoot

World, coming together briefly

to try and patch us up

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2012

[Note: The appearance of this poem on the page has been revised from an earlier version first published in Nature's Tapestry, an anthology compiled for Poetry Now (Forward Press) 2002 and The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]