Mist, Mountains and Motivation

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"Our life is what our thoughts make it." - Marcus Aurelius

I wrote the poem below during my recovery from a nervous breakdown back in the late 1970's and have only slightly revised it.. Until now, reading it has always left me depressed as it recalls a period in my life I would much rather forget. Yesterday evening, though, I found myself in something of a perfect storm; computer crashing, TV failing to respond, a rising panic leaving me unable to quite get my thought processes - already in a mess due to years of hormone therapy for my prostate cancer - into any kind of order.

After a kind friend had helped me send foe, Panic, into retreat over the telephone, I found myself needing to read the poem again. I recalled someone telling me it was "a load of hackneyed crap" at the time, and maybe they were right, but it had done nothing for my fragile morale. Reading it again now, after nearly two years of the world having to live with Covid-19 and now, another rapidly spreading variant, Omicron, it did not leave me feeling depressed at all. On the contrary, it reassured me that, like everyone else, I have the potential to try and rise above the stress that Covid-19 has imposed. 

Along with all of you, I  can but try, succeed or fail, do or die, and may mind-body-spirit see us through this stress, just as it did your truly 40+ years ago. My choice, and I decided to GO for it; already, I could feel my panic retreating, no victory in sight, but the potential for it was there and my depleted energy levels all but restored. I feel the same now, a positive-thinking mindset well and truly kicking in...

I rarely sleep well, but last night I slept better than I had for a long time..

MIST, MOUNTANS AND MOTIVATION

I creep up on you unawares
over periods of time as the going
shifts from gentle slope
to steep hill, until it starts to feel
like there’s a mountain
to climb, its peak shrouded in mist
as if acknowledging
a nagging fear that an enemy is near
if not already here...

At the peak, the scary mist
emanating half-forgotten faces
I can barely place,
whose names long since forgotten
in mists of time, no less
scary for reminding me who I am,
even yet could be,
left wondering why mind-body-spirit
gone eerily quiet...

Tempted, to leap into space
rather than risk descending, ending
all pretence at living,
better to die now – and prove what?
That it has counted for nothing,
this endless searching for something
and getting nowhere fast?
Suddenly, mind-body-spirit finds its voice,
“Do or die, your choice...”

A global challenge, Choice. Do we, nurture
or give up on our past-present-future...?

 Copyright R. N. Taber, 2021

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Remembrance, (Another) Poem for All Seasons

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Today's short poem first appeared on the blog in 2014.

Love, like life, has its seasons and, yes, we all know how changeable seasons can be while always making their presence felt. To no small extent, our capacity for love - in all shapes and forms - and friendship identifies our potential as human beings, no matter how far we may manage to fulfil it in real terms.

Much the same can be said of time. (We only have to look in a mirror to work that one out.)  

Yet, of one thing we can be certain; whatever our ethnicity, creed, gender or sexuality and, yes, age too, spring will always follow winter as sure as sunshine and rainbows follow rain.

REMEMBRANCE, (ANOTHER) POEM FOR ALL SEASONS

When I dream of you, we are in springtime

among high hopes I’ll not forget

When I think of you, it is midsummer,

(that light rainy day we first met)

Your kisses linger on my lips, invoke images  

of autumn leaves so gently falling

When I hear someone speak your name,

I fancy I hear a winter robin calling

To love, like nature, a splendour all its own,

and we, though parted, never alone

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2020

When the only Way is Up

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Sometimes we seem to be going nowhere fast, and haven’t a clue what to about it. I felt that way for years. Plans I’d made about becoming a librarian after leaving school depended on my passing at least two A-level exams, but I only passed one. I drifted into my early 20’s with no clear sense of direction and finally decided to migrate to Australia. This didn’t work out, either, but gave me time to take a long, honest look at myself and work out a positive plan of action; this depended on my returning home as it became clear there was no future for me in Oz. As it happened, I couldn’t get a job and soon did just that. I signed up for a course of teacher training in Canterbury, but my first teaching practise made me realise that a hearing problem should not be underestimated. As luck would have it, I was able to transfer to the local university, finally graduating with a good degree in English and American Literature; this, in turn, made me eligible for a postgraduate course in librarianship.

Career-wise, I seemed to be on an even keel at last, but was still grappling with a sexuality I had been raised to believe was ‘sick’ although no longer a criminal offence for consenting adults since 1967. It would be another few years and a bad nervous breakdown later before I would not only be entirely at ease with being gay, but also see my sexuality as a sure positive rather than a defensive one, certainly no negative.

It would be four years after my breakdown before I was eventually able to get a job in my chosen profession, and have never looked back. The only fly in the ointment was a pressing desire to write, and there just weren’t enough hours in the day. In 1993, cutbacks in Local Government spending meant some compulsory redundancies while everyone else at the library where I worked was offered voluntary redundancy. I decided to be positive, accept, and work part-time. Again, I was fortunate enough to get enough work to support myself and try my hand at writing fiction and poetry until I retired in 2004. I didn’t become a best-selling novelist, but have a modest reputation worldwide as a poet and have no regrets. I see gay-interest poetry and fiction as alternative voices of the same genres and have enjoyed exploring and sharing both on my blogs. I only wish I had emerged from my deaf-blind chrysalis years earlier; no butterfly here, but a psyche with which I am no longer anywhere near as unhappy as I was some 50 years ago.

I once commented to an old friend how I felt lost and had no idea even what path next to take in a life that was...a mess. "Well, Roger," he said, "When you reach rock bottom, the only way is up so hadn't you better make start? The sooner, the better by the sound of it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Right!

WHEN THE ONLY WAY IS UP

So near, so far, dreams
in the heart desperate to break out
and go live, make themselves known
to an unsuspecting world

So near, so far, thoughts
fit for a positive mind-set playing
fast and loose with a vulnerable psyche
all but unfit for purpose

So near, so far, aspirations
persistently put down by jeers pulsing
a self-esteem deaf-blind to the landscape
of human potential…

Deep breaths and first steps,
picking up the gauntlet thrown down
by die-hard naysayers and doom-mongers
with little or no imagination

Learning the art of persuasion,
pitting it against any nemesis of faith
in the power of positive thinking to prove
a worthy winner over all else

A rush of adrenaline for playing
an active role in life’s amphitheatre
rather than sit with live ghosts in the gallery,
left wishing and hoping in vain

Bit between the teeth, not a time
to be resting on laurels, can do better,
need to take on new roles, new challenges,
critics welcome to any field days

So near, so far, nightmares haunting
a psyche afraid of being measured out
for better or worse according to expectations
thrust upon it by false impressions

Here-and-Now, assigned a lead role
in a past-present-future psyche poised
to explore the rolling see-hear landscape
of human potential

Copyright R. N. Taber 2018

One World, Mixed feelings, a Thousand Cuts

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

[Update July 3rd 2018]:Every now and then readers email to ask why I post both gay-interest and general poems on my Google+ site. [Google have since removed personal posts from that site.]A reader wrote only yesterday to insist they are separate genres. Well, everyone is entitled to their point of view, but I see them as alternative voices of the same genre, A poem is a poem is a poem regardless of content just as a person is a person is a person regardless of colour, creed, sex or sexuality. Similarly, one voice, one world. As I have said before, our differences don't make us different, only human.]

In 2016, National Theatre head Rufus Norris and artist Jeremy Deller were behind a project taking place across the UK with men dressed as World War One soldiers. Each carried a card with the name of the soldier they represented and his age - if known - when he died. This ‘living memorial’ involved about 1,500 voluntary participants appearing in public spaces across the UK; the project, entitled We're Here Because We're Here, was commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK's arts programme for the World War One centenary.

Gay people go to war too, of course, always have and always will even if they have had to keep their sexuality under wraps. (Why under wraps? Nature does not discriminate so why should human nature; human nature is better than that...isn't it? Oh, world religions may discriminate but I sincerely doubt any God would, and I don't say that because I am gay but simply as a human being with a strong sense of spirituality that I chose to take from nature rather than any religion even as a child.)

Now, I do not believe in a life after death as such, but neither do I believe in some eternal nothingness. Nature tells me there is a never-ending sense of renewal. My own feelings assure me we live on in the lives - not just the memory - of others. So what of those who never knew us and what will happen to those memories when family and friends who shared them are all dead?  No one knows, of course, and although I do not subscribe to any religion, I envy those who do if only in the sense that it must be very comforting to feel assured that this life is not all there is for us.

Ah, but we are all influenced by other people; in turn, we, too, influence others by what we say and do. In this way we create a ‘presence’ that even death cannot wipe away as if we were but a smudge on the temporal landscape. In this way, at least, we continue our paths through ‘live’ time and space if only in spirit.

There is an old saying, 'Where there's life, there's hope' - and life is everywhere...

This poem is a kenning.

ONE WORLD, MIXED FEELINGS, A THOUSAND CUTS

Death caught my hand one day,
and led me through a cold, dark place
where a part of me wanted to stay;
the cold, it stripped all my pain away;
the dark, it hid tears on my face
for the part of me so wanting to stay;
temptation, an end to endeavour,
but sure to make me suffer for a part
of me that’s come to...nothing?

Broken heart, telling me straight
while peering over Death’s shoulder
at that part of me wanting to die;
suddenly, a welcome light appears,
inciting a rush of heat to the body,
sufficient to allay even secret fears;
I succumb to a familiar embrace,
hear a loved voice reciting the poetry
of that part of me I cannot face

Enter, the life force of humanity,
its responsibility to liberty, equality
and fraternity, no excuses
(in any socio-cultural -religious name)
for undermining the principles
of democracy by silencing its voices
among which sexuality has no less
right to be heard and heeded as any other
in a world found wanting

I am Hope, homing in on world history,
inspiring free spirits, century to century

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2016

[Note: This is not a new post, but one that was accidentally deleted; the poem has been significantly revised since it first appeared on the blog in 2010.]

Squaring up to Potential

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How often, I wonder, do we convince ourselves time is not on our side as an excuse for doing nothing?

Sometimes, we need to square up to Time and reconcile it with whatever we have in mind. Otherwise, years on, we may well find ourselves rummaging our past and finding it badly wanting, ourselves, too. We have only to look up and see cloud faces looking critically down on us to understand where the blame lies.

As I grow old (I will be 70 on the winter solstice) I find myself having to live with many such lost opportunities and subsequent layers of wishful thinking prior to my  (finally) discovering the self- empowering nature of positive thought. (Even regrets don’t have to be totally negative in the sense that we can learn from our mistakes …if only we make time to do so.)

We need to believe in ourselves if we stand any chance at all of making a better, kinder world for all of us. So don't let anyone put you down for whatever reason but explore your potential and make the most of it.  We can but try. Oh, and however things turn out, be happy, and never let anyone make you feel you could do better and are settling for second best. The chances are, they are jealous that making the most of who you are has made you happy while they regret not having tried harder themselves. 

Oh, and happiness comes in all shapes and sizes, of course, so never let anyone judge you, either. Everyone's potential is different and tailored to different aspirations. As I have said many times on the blogs, those differences don't make us different, just human,

SQUARING UP TO POTENTIAL

Peering down a pit of years,
pin-prick of light at the bottom
reminiscent of birth;
bleak, timeless walls rising
like dark threats,
reminiscent of waiting graves
conjured up
by each day’s passing, homing in
on ends of beginnings, beginnings of ends,
nemeses of ideology

Peering down a pit of years,
letting a tear drop to the bottom,
reminiscent of a dream,
ripples of light chasing potential
into a nothingness
reminiscent of an empty cage
as conjured up
by each day’s passing, homing in
on ifs, maybe’s, would have, should have,
no excuses

Peering up at passing clouds,
putting names to faces I have loved,
reminiscent of meaning
despite neither answers or questions,
only heartbeats
reminiscent of raindrops on a petal,
potentially destructive,
but unable to break the spirit of stem
or flower, beginnings and endings nurtured
by Earth Mother

Peering across a garden lawn,
restoring sight enough to open mind,
body and spirit
to the enduring spirituality of life,
love and peace
that cannot deny prison, pit or cage,
but knows better
than to let either surfeit of questions
or want of answers leave us in the dark
from womb to tomb

Trust body, mind and spirit
to flush out inner, kinder, better selves,
reminiscent of solutions
to unanswered questions left to climb
bleak, timeless walls,
spurred on by pin-pricks of light
competing to engage
humanity with pride for homing in
on timeless heavens, no end of potential
in its sights

Copyright R. N. Taber 2015

L-I-F-E, Achievement Skills (A Personal Best)

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There is no shame in coming last in whatever so long as we give it our best shot. In my experience, we are often inclined to let the past hold us back to such an extent that we deny our future much of its potential. Childhood hang-ups, failed relationships, being made to feel we are a disappointment to someone whose opinion matters to us…; such issues are never easy to shrug off even as we grow older and (supposedly) wiser.

Life isn’t - or shouldn’t be - a competition. It’s not all about winners and losers. For a start, we’re not all playing the same game even, let alone running the same race. Everyone is different and wants different things from life and that’s how it should be. Even so, we must not - nor should not - live in the past, however tempting sometimes that may be. Besides, we all deserve a decent future even if it doesn't always work out quite as we would have wished.

Body, mind and spirit deserve that we put them first even if it means trailing last in more judgemental eyes (that rarely if ever see a wood for its trees anyway...) Believe me, I know how it feels. I was often put down by family and friends as an 'under-achiever' because I did not do well at school, but still managed to get a good Honours degree at university a few years later, having made time to get to grips with both real life and a less self-conscious awareness of my own potential.

 As I have said before on the blogs - and almost certainly will again - our differences don't make us different only human and we all need to respect that. At the same time, as a teacher of mine used to say, respect doesn't come free but has to be earned. Perhaps if more of us set about earning respect for our differences instead of dragging them into disrepute by employing dubious one upmanship tactics, different people with different perspectives on a common humanity might yet find common ground, even discover that living in peace with one another doesn't have to be an impossible dream...?

This poem is a villanelle.

L-I-F-E, ACHIEVEMENT SKILLS (A PERSONAL BEST)

Judge not the present by its past,
let time fly by
crying, ‘Foul!’ (trailing last)

Beware memory’s fair blast
make us cry;
judge not the present by its past,

Let not life travel light and fast,
pass us by
crying, ‘Foul!’ (trailing last)

Hope, its colours at half mast
each day we die;
judge not the present by its past

Come dawn, let’s feed not fast,
or look it in the eye
crying, ‘Foul!’ (trailing last)

To life, let love a lifeline cast
(if not always at first try);
judge not the present by its past
crying, ‘Foul!’ (trailing last)

Copyright R. N. Taber 2008; 2015

Potential for Inspiration

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A colleague once remarked, not a little facetiously, that poets think they have the answer to everything.

Oh, but I wish!

At school, some 50+ years ago, my English teacher, Mr Rankin, (a Scotsman) once commented to the effect that life is all about discovery, and that is all about asking questions. 'Stop asking questions,' he told us, 'and you might as well be dead.'

Oh, but YES.

So what is life all about? Why are we here?  Different people, different answers, but it’s asking the question that counts, and makes us who we are.

POTENTIAL FOR INSPIRATION

What is life, but to have lived at all?

What is death, but all we‘ve not missed?

What is love, but to have loved at all?

What is beauty, but its flowers in a mist?

What is desire but to know desire at all?

(What is loss but by its light never kissed?)

What are dreams, but a life unfulfilled?

What are regrets, but art’s timelines?

What are hopes, but the inner eye’s take

on seasonal colours?

What is life, but to have lived it all?

What is death, but refuting all we missed?

What is love, but to have loved it all,

the beauty of its flowers in a spring mist?

What is desire, but to have desired it all,

loss but shadows where its light has passed

in a dream, the stuff a common humanity

lets pass for peace where its regrets run

with its hopes along timelines recording

art’s penchant for copycat?

In being moved to ask just one question

lies the potential for inspiration

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

Marking time, Sapling, Waiting On Its Seasons

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Today’s poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008 so I guess now is as good a time as any to give it a airing albeit a slightly revised version. 

I am in my late 60s now. Now and then I consider the discrepancy between what I have achieved and what I’d once hoped to achieve, and my heart sinks...until I consider various off-shoots of that ‘unfulfilled potential’ and then the tree doesn’t look half so bad after all.

MARKING TIME, SAPLING, WAITING ON ITS SEASONS

Youth, with dreamy eyes

and wind in the hair,

soaking up heaven’s store

of tears for cares

like leaves untimely fallen

on slim shoulders

Like a sapling in a breeze,

see it bend, never break;

watch leaves bud and grow;

now green, now red,

now gold for each mortal

breath it takes

Nor shall its season cease,

grown older, stronger,

a bold heart harbouring 

the finer seeds

of Creation for nature’s  

nurturing

Spirited tree, proud and free,

a living part of earth’s

finer tapestry, sheltering all

(no one’s enemy)

though they carve initials

on your body

Forever, tall and beautiful

in the mind’s eye;

where lashed to dark skies,

a freedom won

by egg cries sure to archive

its leafy passions

Potential in its prime, marking

time

  

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2011

[Note: An earlier version of this poem  appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2004; 2nd (revised) e-edition in preparation.] 

Chariots of Fire

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I am reminded of a conversation I had many years ago when I was an egocentric teenager. I asked a teacher (as one does) what life is all about. Yes, well…silly question, I know, but I thought it sounded clever. More to the point, I thought it made me appear very clever.  I received what I thought was, in turn, a very silly answer, something about its being a bedtime story for grown-ups.

Now, though, I’m not so sure it was such a silly answer, and suspect it was too profound for my little poem to do it justice.

I recall telling my mother about that conversation. She just said, “He’s a very nice man if a little eccentric/ Mind you, there is always more to eccentric people than meets the eye just as there's nearly always something in what they have to say worth giving some thought to. Now, go and do your homework…’ Another very nice person, my mother . She, too, always had something to say worth giving some thought to. 

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

Sometimes, I regret my lost youth

but for its teaching me
my place in the world, neither high
nor low for racing chariots
of fire across a playground of dreams, 

skimming time and space,
grandest of all arenas least known
to Man

It’s enough, in the end, to land safe

and sound among moon shadows

bringing we charioteers such presence
of mind-body-spirit known only
to children hungering for fairy tales, 

now lost, now finding their way
in some otherworld to take up the reins
and race each other to cheers
and jeers, highs and lows, archived
to living memory 

Can it be, I wonder, that life is, after all,

a (potentially) feel-good bedtime story?

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009

Prime Time

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Life experience is a wonderful thing. We should make the best of things and let the worst go the same way as a snowman.

Easier said than done, I hear you say? True. But the alternative is unthinkable. When the going gets rough, we can but work at turning things around. I’m not usually one for clichés…BUT…where there’s a will, there is (invariably) a way. Things DO get better, believe me although, sadly, not always when we need them to the most.

Hang in there, folks! I did, and any negatives are vastly outnumbered by positives. regrets are vastly outnumbered by positives. (Did I say it was easy...?)

PRIME TIME

Seconds, hours,

days, years,

lifting spirits, teasing

the soul,

chasing after butterflies

in summer sunshine,

looking out for rainbows

after autumn rain,

watching the snowmen

melt away,

waiting for springtime

to come again

Turns the wheel slowly,

now faster, slower

creaking like human bones

on a rack pulled 

now this way, now that ...

Though time, it rushes in

and nature. seek cover, 

between a common sun's

rising and setting,

there is love for the taking,

no matter the world,

its ever working us over

So, let’s all be making time

for one another

Copyright R N Taber 2004

[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]

Annual Report

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World religions have caused strife and division in the world for centuries. Is  it not time they made more real effort and less cosmetic posturing to work together if only to keep their promises of love and peace?

Less one-upmanship and more mutual respect among the followers of this religion or that would be a good start. As for people like me who subscribe to no religion, don’t we deserve some respect too?

A I often say on the blogs, our differences do not make us different, only human.

Doesn’t humanity deserve a better chance to realise its greater potential than than various socio-cultural-religious tensions across the world are prepared to permit?

Well, doesn’t it...?

ANNUAL REPORT

Born to lead, fulfil, unite;

invariably, though, dividing,

losing sight of how many

choosing to fight on one side

rather than risk losing face,

faith in interpretations of rights

and wrongs plainly pointing

to a war strategy - for victory

over mortality

Come to bring peace, hope;

Invariably, though, screws up

at practically every turn

for each well-meant move taken,

every word preached ringing

with sincerity - truth’s old enemy

better placed than any

to take a dove’s eye view

of our morality

Pigeon-holed by history,

shaped by the eternal mystery

of Creation, each to our own

interpretation and verification

according to our temporal

needs, desires, lighting the fires

of spirituality - a common

humanity or personal gain,

as the case may be

Christianity, Islam, whatever,

can do better, must try harder

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2010

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original that appears in   A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2005.]