Blackbird Has Spoken

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

[Update 5/5/17: I am 71 now, have been living with the prostate cancer for 6+ years and still eluding the Grim Reaper thanks to hormone therapy. I still avoid social media, but all e-mails welcome and answered...except any trolls whom I simply delete!] RT

I have always made it clear that I will not post comments as I think they clutter a blog (yes, even the nice, intelligent ones) so please do not be offended when you receive notification that your comment has been deleted. Nor do I have time to go on Twitter or Facebook except to link my blogs as some readers have requested. [I will never return to social media having had experience of trolls.]

To be honest, on-line social networking never was my ‘thing’ but I am always happy to exchange emails if I have their email address or there is a contact button on their blog so I can at least thank them for their comment/s. I always reply to emails. (My email address is in the Blog’s introductory paragraph.) I have enjoyed a regular exchange of emails with some readers for several years now. So feel free to let me know what you think of either or both blogs and, yes, I can take constructive criticism of the chin.

I am doing fine with the prostate cancer treatment, but I’m 65 (born 1945) and get tired so need to rest a lot. I try to write up my blogs after discovering that I get withdrawal symptoms on days I don’t.... I am also struggling with writing Book Three of my gay-crime trilogy (Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption) as well as preparing new editions of my poetry collections (with revisions to some poems) and proofing my second Fred Winter novel in case Catching Up With Murder (2010) .sells at least moderately well. In addition, as I live on my own, there is always shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. to be done and I especially like to spend as much time with friends as possible.

Meanwhile...

Oh, how bright mornings can fill even sleepyheads a feisty passion that demands partners stay in bed a little longer ... if only on the pretext of caving in to the cat’s refusal to budge from its favourite spot on the duvet.

Ah, but blackbird has indeed spoken ... calling on everyone , especially in societies fractured by socio-cultural-religious differences to pull together and remember that our differences do not make us different, only human,.

BLACKBIRD HAS SPOKEN

Blackbird
on a leafy, swaying branch...
A forefinger coaxing
tired nipples...
Chirpy young sparrows rippling
our personal space

Feisty fingers
at shirts, belts, stubborn zips;
late spring scents
teasing far suppler thighs
than ours and, yes,
we’ll miss that train,
the board meeting
at ten - and leave the curtains
open, closing eyes 
for a blackbird’s renewed joy
at such a coming alive;
common body,
three-in-one, grave decisions
celebrating acts
of redemption, blackbird’s
finest hour, throat throbbing,
wings flexing

Now, in full flight,
flung free of tree and branch
to sweeps of sky;
will settle soon enough
but never for less again
than this

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2017

[Note: Slightly revised from the original version that appears in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]