Nothing to Prove

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

This entry is from my gay-interest poetry blog archives for July 2012. I will publish two new poems here one New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, and then only now and again during 2020 while I concentrate on compiling revised editions of my poetry collections - and a brand new collection - for publishing online. Meanwhile, feel free to rediscover poems among the archives for either or even both blogs...

“The only problem I have with being gay,” a much younger Roger Taber once confided to a friend, is that you always feel you have something to prove.

“Bollocks!” retorted my friend with feeling, “Love, affection, friendship...these things have nothing to prove, they just are... What does being gay having anything to do with it?”

Now, is that naive or wise? I know which answer I go for...

This poem is a villanelle.

NOTHING TO PROVE

What is it about love,

breaking our every fall?

Nothing to prove

In dark skies above,

listen for its mating call;

(What is it about love?)

Like hand to glove,

poetry to nature’s spell,

nothing to prove

Songbirds above,

taking us where we will;

(What is it about love?)

Where hunters have

well-honed eyes for a kill,

nothing to prove?

Take hand from glove,

watch it wither, as it will;

What is it about love?

Nothing to prove ...

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

In the Company of Dolphins

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

I have been asked to repeat the link  to my poetry reading on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square during the summer of 2009  as part of sculptor Antony Gormley's One and Other 'live sculpture' project. At first, I am shown being lowered by crane to the plinth and it is a good five minutes before the reading starts: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T  [NB: Sept 19, 2019 - The British Library confirmed today that he video is no longer available as it was incompatible with a new IT system, However, it still exists and BL hope to reinstate it and make it available to the public again at some future date.] RNT

Meanwhile...

This short poem is about love and friendship and being there for loved ones and friends when they need us. .It is also about the lasting power of love and friendship.

There is a saying that what goes around comes around. We never know when it will be our turn to need help. People for whose idea of love and friendship is a one-way street (and there are plenty out there who expect us to be there for them but rarely if ever reciprocate!) would do well to remember that.

IN THE COMPANY OF DOLPHINS

I think of us at twilight’s gentler tears

on flowers in a pretty garden, glistening

like ocean spray in spring sunshine…

In the mind’s eye, I see survivors

clinging to the wreckage of a ship that

safe harbours will never greet again,

and dolphins come like guardian angels

to redeem a fate demanded by storm clouds

riding old Poseidon’s back

Now calmer seas, survivors washed up

on kinder shores, dolphins gone, task done.

Lost souls saved at godly whim?

I know not, can but let heart and mind

wish the company of dolphins to bring us

safely home…and though that be left

to this sad world’s darker poetry,

may love’s light shine through twilight’s

gentler tears on us

[From: Accomplice To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]