Potential for Inspiration

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

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

The Last Long Hauler Out Of E-Bay

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

Some people like to hedge their bets regarding what if anything they might face once they have ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’. (That’s straight out of Hamlet, of course. Good ole Shakespeare. Sounds so much better better than just being dead, doesn’t it?)

Me? Well, I was never much of a gambler so I guess I’ll just have to take my chances with nature…

THE LAST LONG HAULER OUT OF E-BAY

Bid for a ticket,

now halfway to (Heaven?)

angels rushing by - no

less anxious than I to see

the end of the line

Looking down, I see

people on hands and knees

in poverty and pain - far

more anxious than I to see

if God’s at home

Looking out, I feel

a devil’s breath on my face,

smell incense burning

like a pot-pourri of roses

and grow anxious

Bid for a ticket,

now halfway to (Heaven?);

angels rushing past - no

less anxious than I to make up

for lost time

[From: Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]