Friends

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Today’s poem - another villanelle - was first written in 2002 and published in an anthology the following year before I included it in my collection.

Why do I make revisions at all?  During the process of preparing my collection for publication to Google Play in e-format, I find myself dissatisfied with some poems for reasons not always obvious, even to me; most, it has to do with how a poems ‘flows’ – or doesn’t, as the case may be.

Given that I’ve never really got along with most members of either my immediate or extended family, good friends have always been especially important to me. (Yes, even those of the ‘fair weather’ variety.) As I grow old (71 now and live alone) I am, oh, so thankful to and for good friends. and value our friendship even more.  

FRIENDS

Come some dark, lonely night

or saddest sunny day,

find friends, making it all right

At one with moon and starlight

kept at bay,

come some dark, lonely, night

Wherever a so-weepy half-light

gone charcoal grey,

find friends, making it all right

Find home fires burning bright

(shaping our clay)

come some dark, lonely night

Losing out (again) taking fright

of facing another day;

find friends, making it all right

Oh, but no kinder end or respite

from worldly rites of way;
come some darkest, longest night,

find friends, making it all right

Copyright R. N. Taber 2003; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem first appeared under the title 'Among Friends, Music to the Ears' in an anthology, Where the Words take You, Anchor Books [Forward Press] 2003 and subsequently in The Third Eye (2004) by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]

G-O-D, Live Metaphor OR What's in a Name...?

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

Various religions have their own ideas about God, me, I found a sense of peace and spirituality in nature and, for all I know, maybe God is there. Maybe God IS nature...

Does it really matter where we look, how we find or even what we call God?

We are all human beings, created in much the same way to share this sorry planet of ours. So why oh, why, is it that more people can’t put their differences aside and be happy to share what they have in common?

As I gave said before and regular readers will know only too well (I often repeat myself) our differences don’t make us different, only human.

This poem is a kenning, first published in Italy (2006) and subsequently in my collection.

G-O-D, LIVE METAPHOR or WHAT’S IN A NAME...?

Call me what you will, I mean well

though my better intentions mistaken

for gross interference in the ways

of man, woman and child. Navigator

rather than manipulator am I, ready

to guide, lead, through a maze of super

highways, slip roads, dirt tracks,

if suspected of conspiring with nature

against civilization

Call me what you will, I mean well

though my better intentions mistaken

for confrontation with man, woman

and child over some trespass or other

against commandments set in stone

by those rewriting to their own design,

crossing humanity’s thin red line,

always ready to point s finger of blame

in my direction

Call me what you will, I mean well

though my better intentions mistaken

for retribution, sporting with fragile

emotions, playing false at devotions,

wrecking the well laid plans of mice

and men without so much as offering

any explanation, feeding on the likes

of Faith, Hope and Charity to sustain

an enduring loyalty

Call me what you will, I mean well

whatever G-O-D made to spell

Copyright R. N. Taber 2006; 2013

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original as it appears under the title 'What' in a Name?' in The Sound of Silence, TATL (Italy) 2006 and subsequently 1st eds. of Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007; revised ed. in e-format in preparation.]