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].

Name:
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 14 March 2020

Insight, the Twinkle in Time's Eye


Rarely are our thoughts processed more intensely and tested than as we ponder questions about life and death, especially the latter if only because it represents The Great Unknown and we human beings prefer to know (for sure) what we are up against. Throughout our lives, we have at least the semblance of some control, but over the time and nature of our death we have little or none. More disturbing still, what happens once we are cut free of a life that so loves to play us like puppets on a string and go into free fall? Something or nothing…?

Those who subscribe to a religion think they have the answer while those of us who don’t take hope from nature’s cycle of renewal.

Whatever, thinking about such things, homing on any conclusions (however arbitrary) we may reach and acting on them, is probably as good a preparation for life and death as we can aspire. 

There is much to be said for the old adage, look before you leap, but it has to be said that the looking eye does not always see; it is the inner eye, as prompted by searching thought, that is more likely to home in (or not) on not only what is it looking at but also looking for.

Looking, finding, reworking, making reparation, whatever ...  life, art and science owe much to its wannabes and wanna-knows. As for what anyone really thinks about all they see and hear, few will ever get to know unless they have access to his or her personal space.

INSIGHT, THE TWINKLE IN TIME'S EYE

Squatting on a patch of waste land,
imaging the growing emptiness
of wishful thinking feeding streams
of consciousness running through
alleys, backyards and housing estates,
watching the living and the dead
vying for time's favours in diaries
and poems they were always meaning
to write

Addressing the insubstantial nature
of shadows, inner sight focusing
on the human spirit playing host to body
no more or less than the flow of blood
feeding its veins as myth's muddy waters
close in, re-assessing attitudes scrawled
in everyday graffiti or glued to pasteboard
points of view; scientific, religious…
(does it really matter?) ever attempting
to win us over by fair means or foul
since that first day at school, now exposed
for the saddest, cruellest trick of all

Articulating on life as mind-body-spirit 
preparing mind and body to chance
a coming of age, despite envious gods
and their petty tyrannies if upstaged
by human selfishness, stuff of immaturity
feeding an ego-led imagination
(Oh, and whatever happened to that?)
and leading us astray who so love to think
we know it all

Focusing on and interpreting the purpose
of one starry eye watching out for us
who are frantically rummaging mortality,
for a kinder fate (surely?) than to be left
drifting in full view of old gods gathered
to gloat, our humanity come less than right
for running the gamut of human history
posed by selective readings between lines
of cautionary tales told by one, Jonah,
from the belly of a whale last seen spouting
gobbledegook to hunters well up for the chase
no more or less than for its own sake

Mind-body-spirit, cultivating the wry twinkle
of all-seeing eye

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2016

[Note: This poem has been revised from an earlier version that appears under the title ‘Death Star’ in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber 2010.]


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Friday 31 August 2012

Death of a Princess

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

On August 31st 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was tragically killed when a car carrying herself and Dodi Fayed crashed in Paris. 

Many readers who appear to have difficulty accessing You Tube directly for one reason or another have asked me to repeat the link to a my friend Graham's video of the memorial in Hyde Park along with two  poems I read over it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_iX3LzGK4k

Meanwhile, here is a new poem written in memory of a remarkable woman; a devoted mother whose beauty, charm, and capacity for compassion won hearts and minds wherever she went; traits she has clearly passed on to her children.

She wasn’t without flaws, you might say, so tell me then...who isn't?

DEATH OF A PRINCESS 

Brought to its knees
the day she died, the world
asked questions,
demanded answers,  cried
itself to sleep

Media loved to play
the blame game, but no one
(quite) convinced
by speculation compromising
its integrity

Crowds played out
the performance of a lifetime
at the palace gates
while its key players left
them to it

Hysteria over a flag
left flying high and crying out
for half-mast
lent tunnel vision an air
of plausibility

Elsewhere, a family
resolved to protect its own
devising new ways
of doing the walk and talking
the talk

Diana, on an island
of dreams, inviting royalty
and ordinary people
to rise above tears like petals
between showers

Brought to its knees
the day she died, the world
still asks questions,
demands answers,  cries
itself to sleep

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012



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