A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Thursday 9 February 2012

To The Lighthouse

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

It isn't only sailors that need to watch out for a guardian light.

We all need to keep an eye on light at the end of whatever tunnel we may sometimes find ourselves in; it may dim sometimes, but will never go out...unless we let it.

The poem is a villanelle, its title inspired by a novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf. Even so, where her brilliant, deceptively simple tale might well be seen as a literary variation on the old adage, it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, my poem could only ever aspire to be, at best, a distant echo. It is true, though, that all that goes into getting there counts even more than reaching (or not reaching) any goal.

Regrets? Yes, of course, we all have them, but we also deserve credit for trying...well, don't we?

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

It’s a light that I will always see
wherever I go…
in spite of shadows crowding me

Day or night, it will constant be,
come rain or snow...
it’s a light that I will always see

I take heart that others can see,
be in the know…
in spite of shadows crowding me

On land or sea, a born sexuality
like a lighthouse glow...
it’s a light that I will always see

It lends me a sense of spirituality
as through this life I go…
in spite of shadows crowding me

Come a time we are but history,
let others follow...
it’s a light that I will always see,
in spite of shadows crowding me

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


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