Some Doors Never (Quite) Close OR Young Love, Old Love
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Overheard in a local store recently:
1st MAN: She’s only seventeen, so how can she know her own mind? I tell you, the boy’s trouble. I’ve told her to stay away from him, but...
2nd MAN: Kids, eh? So much to learn and so much they just don’t want to know...
(Both men move away.)
Now, I have no idea of the actual context of this conversation, having only caught a snippet, but it was enough to remind me that not only LGBT folks are up against traditional ideas, one of these being that young people don’t know their own minds. True, they have a lot to learn, but how to learn if they are not encouraged to do so?
The vast majority of parents only want that is best for their children. For many parents, though, their children never (quite) grow up and/ or may well follow a different learning curve to the one their parents have in mind for them. Whatever, mulling over this snippet of conversation resulted (for better, for worse) in a poem.
SOME DOORS NEVER (QUITE) CLOSE or YOUNG LOVE, OLD LOVE
There’s
a love song
been
running around in my head
all
day, today
and
most days since last we met,
said
our goodbyes,
promised
to meet up again soon;
only,
it wouldn’t happen;
life
would deal us more cruel blows
before
we’d meet again
I
hear it in the wind
as
I lie in my bed at night, dreaming
of
you, wondering
where
and how you are, recalling
all
the plans we made
for
a future with neither sorrow
nor
pain to haunt us,
but
love alone to see us through all life
may
send to taunt us
They
meant us well,
both
family and friends who warned
we
were not meant
to
be together, no birds of a feather,
you
and I, but chalk
and
cheese who could not hope
to
ever realise our dreams
of
a world that would gladly see its lovers
rise
above its divisions
Time
passed, the same
song
in my heart urging me to overcome
society’s
resistance
to
the you-me-us of years when we
thought
of ourselves
as
free to be together, no matter
how
great the pain
as
may well take us to task for going against
its
traditional grain
Give
it time, they had said,
and
we’d see the wisdom of advice given,
but
my love, it lived on
in
mind-body-spirit until I resolved
to
seek you out,
take a chance on the feelings we had
making
such choices
as
we’d have made then, but told “too young"
by
older, wiser voices
Decision
made, interrupted
by
a knock on my door I hesitate to answer
for
fear of losing the thread
of
mind-body-spirit’s engaging me
with
such home truths
as
I’d been advised to put aside by those
wanting better for us
than
what they could not even begin to consider
for
themselves
It
was in something of a daze I opened the door
to
find you smiling there...
Labels: bigotry, global consciousness, human nature, human spirit, life forms, love, mind-body-spirit, parent-child relationships, personal space, poetry, positive thinking, prejudice, self-awareness, society