Sweet Mystery of Life (and Death)

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

We all have dreams, and some come true. Many dreams, though, remain just that...dreams. Even so, life goes on. Yet, getting real, being positive, and moving forward does not mean having to live a single dream behind. On the contrary, the likelihood is that  every dream that finds a place in mind, body and spirit will continue, each in its own way, to inspire us to be a better person. 

I recall having a nightmare as a child. My mother reassured me that it was only a bad dream. 'There's good and there's bad. You have good dreams, too, right?' she said. I nodded. 'So trust the good ones to get the better of the bad, and you won't go far wrong,' I can still hear her whispering in my ear although she died nearly 40 years ago. 

Gay or straight, no one can take our dreams away from us and any who criticize, even condemn us for going along with a dream come true, especially in the shape of someone to love, quite simply hasn't a clue...

This poem is kenning.

SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE (AND DEATH)

I cherish hopes of spring,

nurture them like misty showers

encouraging flowers to grow,

buds on trees to come to blossom,

fruit or leaf, as they will

though some fall foul of a sudden

gust of wind or children

come to make sport with nature’s

finer talent for creation

I sing a song of summer

though autumn leaves consigned

to compost heaps

where swallows desert the places

that gave life to their young

and the likes of me poems to pass on

though winter sure to teach

us lessons in survival even a robin

can but do its best to learn

Winter come and gone,

hopes winging on a swallow’s return,

lifeless branches budding

nature returning me, also, to a life

badly bruised by winter’s

show of not even caring if we last

or fade, you or I, especially

given unlooked for intervention

by forces natural or human

But let me, the dream inspiring you,

in my own way, like spring, run true

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009

[Note: This poem  first appeared in an anthology From Coast to Coast: a Forward Press Regional Collection in 2010, and subsequently in my collection Tracking the Torchbearer (2012) under the title A Question of Trust.]