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.

Saturday 15 March 2014

My Friends, The Trees


Sometimes it can feel as if our world has come to an end or is closing down on us like the curtain on a Shakespearean tragedy.  

I have often felt that way, even as a child (when no one took depression in children very seriously if at all) and have spent the best part of a lifetime finding ways of restoring a view of life and self that gives rise to optimism rather than pessimism.

Creative therapy (writing) and reading have played a vital part in my battle to beat depression, but it is nature that has proved my salvation.  While not even the finest arts can copy it, a troubled mind, body, and spirit can do far, far, worse than try. So it has been with mine since my partner died even though we were together but a few years and it was a long time ago. My mother’s death, too, affected me deeply. 

Yet, the trees remain, the same trees we walked among, talked among, and rested among to enjoy leafy kaleidoscopes and create our own; trees now bursting with life, now all but dying only to thrive again according to time and season. Such is the stoicism of nature from which the human body-mind-spirit can take heart if it will but pause long enough to look and see, listen and learn…

MY FRIENDS, THE TREES

I never felt so alone
as once you were gone,
drab days stretching
on and on like dirt tracks
leading nowhere
but deeper into woodlands
where no sun shining,
birds singing or rabbits
teasing the eye

Then a day came, 
long after you were gone,
I chanced to spot
a chick sparrow fly the nest,
hover uncertainly,
fledgling wings in a flap,
but only briefly
before soaring up, up,
and away 

I followed its flight,
spotted a trickle of sunlight
bursting through trees
whose spring leaves
dripped rainbows on the eye,
restoring colour 
to a world left colourless 
since you painted me
out of it

Suddenly, the inner ear 
hears once more, inner eye
can see again,
empty heart starting to fill
(if slowly) with joys 
of spring, reawakening
happier times, 
trying out heart strings
and retuning 

Oh, but less lonely now,
befriended by trees, lifted
by ages-old tales
of love and peace, songs
celebrating life,
poems reflecting that death
must wait its turn
while we relish the thrill
of first flight

Sparrow flies into tree,
possibly same bird, same tree,
but not the same me, 
loath to leave my friends,
the trees, yet anxious
as they to remind the world 
it’s spring, 
body, mind, and spirit 
overflowing

Copyright R. N. Taber 2014

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