While we are all sitting on fences,
tearing them down or maybe even trying to mend some, I wonder what The
Gatekeeper thinks about it all...?
THE GATEKEEPER’S SONG
They turned their backs on me
or was it I who ran away…?
Memory, it so likes to play tricks
on us, rather than let us see
what really takes place in corners
of the heart we rarely seek out,
for fearing what we may find
in holiday snapshots and behind
words in letters read in anger,
birthday cards left unsent, never
recognising the danger of years
passing so quickly till we’ve only
such poor excuses and regret
as conscience cares to permit shine
in darkest corners of the mind
where, yes, we’d so return a while,
have love take us that last mile
where stubborn feet still refuse to
go
though heart and soul never left,
and would set us free, let us see
all
the heart deserves to know
No, not free from nature's finer
ties
(never that) but, rather, set out
in tablets of stone, supposedly
less
likely to break than any we shape
in a clay that may please human
eyes
for moment in time, but hardens
(not as we imagined) to a
perspective
on dark corners where sometimes
pain seeks solace, yet finding none
in unused icons of human hearts
left but to gather dust like old
photos
Better, surely, to air home truths
(even after years of running away)
if only to deny the world its pleasure
in exposing us along tired lines
of letting live but to die another
day,
no matter where any blame let lie
nor we (or they) be straight or gay?
Time to open the gate before it’s
too late
to live to love another day…
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010, 2019
[Note: An earlier version of this
poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber,
Assembly Books, 2010; slightly but significantly revised, 2019.]