You-Me-Us, Lifesaver

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

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.” – Anne Frank

“In all things, it is better to hope than to despair.” - Goethe

“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” – Pablo Naruda

As the war in Ukraine escalates, news came through yesterday of Russian forces bombing a children's and maternity hospital in the port city of Mariupol. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has declared it a war crime.

Meanwhile the flow of despairing people struggling to flee Ukraine in freezing conditions continues with Russian forces persistently ignoring ceasefires.

At home, and across the world, we can but watch, aghast that this could happen in 2022 while, many of us still suffering both mental and physical effects of having to cope with the coronavirus. The situation in Ukraine may well seem a whole lot worse, but Covid-19 has brought despair to many and despair is despair is despair; to the despairing individual, it is as immeasurable as it is indescribable.

In this life (as many, including yours truly, can testify) when standing still is no option, looking back on kinder times is often the only life force available to spur us into moving forward, less with regret for their absence than in a spirit of celebration and hope.

YOU-ME-US, LIFESAVER

In the eyes of sadness
there is only one thing to do,
pluck a cloud
from the sky and hitch a ride
through time,
to wherever mind-body-spirit
has a whim to revisit,
put a smile on the face of a Here-and-Now
that’s forgotten how

There are old friends,
we used to know before our years
took us places
we didn’t always want or choose
to go...
when we’d laugh and play games.
exchange party hats
and silly names, listen wide-eyed to fairy tales,
fly with nightingales

There are special people,
with whom we’d enjoy special moments,
whose genial ghosts
never fail to cheer the soul that’s lost,
taken a wrong turning,
needing to be put right, helped to lighten
the load it bears,
redirected to some far kinder thought process
than ends in tears

Playful pets, too, recalled
to perform such lively acts as likely to warm
a heart grown cold,
for loneliness, grief or on discovering old age
no ‘true-to-life’ movie
here Happy-Ever-After as likely as not to win
Oscar nominations all round,
no dry eyes in the audience, bur tears
of delight, no fears

Ah, many the comfortable
and pleasurable zone we need to make our own.
as and when
we can, and best not delayed as any tomorrow
may yet bring sorrows
enough to urge a saddened eye but open wide,
steer a passing cloud
through as lively a stream of shared consciousness
as You-Me-Us

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022

 

 

 

 

 

In the Blink of an Elephant's Eye

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

A reader asks how I manage to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life “... in order to end most of your poems on a positive note?”  Well, I do try and have probably posted more such poems than usual lately, partly to knee-jerk a positive thinking mindset of my own in to action while, hopefully, encouraging any readers who may be feeling at a low ebb, to recharge their batteries.

I am by no means good with new technology. Writing up blog posts on my p c has always been stressful for me, but the kind of stress I welcome, if only for knowing that, by the time I am ready to publish, I will have shown various health issues just who’s boss.

Progress is, of course, part and parcel of life, but some of us adapt to it better than others, for various reasons, not the least of them being growing old and/ or having to tackle mental health issues.

To those who adapt to change fairly easily, welcome it as a challenge even, I would, of course, always encourage so positive and forward-looking approach; at the same time, I would also ask them not to be dismissive of those of us not up to the mark in one respect or another, for whatever reason. 

As we journey through life, our weaknesses often become obvious, less so the strengths that enable us to carry them, not least memories of kinder, happier times; the latter has never been about wanting time to stand still, rather it's about being inspired to journey on... whatever the next day may have in store for us. 

IN THE BLINK OF AN ELEPHANT’S EYE

Peering into the digital eye
of an elephant, my screen saver,
carried on a tide of empathy
by the beast into a digital jungle,
trumpeting our arrival
above other noises, all despairing
of anyone listening

Empathy, mind-body-spirit
conceding any virtual trumpeting
able to suss out surrounds,
savaged every day of every year,
its habitats and sources
of vital life forces put under duress
in the interests of progress

Progress for whom, though,
among creatures great and small,
left behind, struggling
to adapt while not knowing why
needs must all species
move on, make front pages of history
for classroom curiosity?

Can hear new bells tolling
nature and human nature’s failing
to solve new puzzles,
fathom new mysteries, making out
we know what’s going on,
whether or not (really) up to the mark,
all but in the dark...

Computer crashes, leaving me
wondering why, and what on earth I do
next by way of resuming
whatever progress I’d been making
in a winking, blinking,
elephant’s eye, invariably taking heart,
to reboot and restart

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2022