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 31 October 2020

Covid Autumn

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

A child at a bus stop asked its mother, “Why do so many leaves fall in autumn?” A woman in the queue answered for the perplexed mum, “They cry a saint’s tears for all of us so we can be spared too much crying, “What’s a saint?” the child wanted to know. “Your ma, for a one,” the woman chuckled, “… if only for raising you up to ask questions.” 

Everyone laughed, just as the bus arrived, but plenty of food for thought there, yeah?

That was years ago. I was the child, aged about five years, tugging at my mother’s hand in a bus queue. Later, I asked my mother if she thought the woman was rude for butting in. She  laughed, a twinkle in each eye, “Well, maybe she shouldn’t have butted in, but she certainly made my day, and you would do well to remember what she said about asking questions.” I promptly took my cue and asked, “Can I have an ice-cream?” Whereupon I learned something else that day; not every question supplies the answer you are hoping for …

Seventy years on, I am still asking questions such as the one on everybody’s lips at the moment, “Why this coronavirus, and for how long?” No easy answers to that one nor quick fixes either although I would suggest those selfish people letting their masks slip and/ or refusing to wear one as and when required simply because they don’t want to, ask themselves what gives them the right to put others at risk … ?

COVID AUTUMN

Winter closing in fast,
Earth Mother weeping as always 
for Her sleeping beauties,
yet taking comfort in a reawakening
come another spring,
while tears, too, for all Earth’s children,
no matter who or where,
having to live with pain, anxiety, fear,
as never (quite) felt before 

Winter, calling on all nature
to be sure and make due preparation
for whatever it takes;
separation, hibernation, skeletal trees
echoing hopeful springs,
glorious summers, evergreen cousins
egging on any ghosts nesting
where not so long ago sounds of birthing,
singing, true joie de vivre 

Winter, a forbidding season,
yet able to not only summon such ghosts
of universal significance,
but bring them together, lend them a finer
magnificence then any diary
of personal or global consciousness,
even its horrors redeemed
by heroes of war and peace destined to prove
the tragi-wisdom of sacrifice 

Falling leaves, such tears
as nature and human nature needs must
let fall in remembrance
and gratitude for natural and personal
histories at the heart
of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures
great and small, long before
natural and human waste began to haunt a sleepy
global consciousness 

Nothing changes, everything changes, such is the turn
of the screw that is a Covid-19 autumn

 Copyright R N. Taber 2020

 

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Saturday 3 October 2020

Autumnal Life Forces

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

This poem first appeared on the blog in 2012; it has been slightly but significantly revised since I included it in my collection, Accomplices to Illusion, 2007. I am hoping to publish new editions of my earlier collections at some future date; they will mostly comprise revised versions of poems from first editions.

Having just finished my first new collection since 2012, I am approaching publishers, but may need to self-publish again as many just don't like the idea of general and gay-interest poems under one cover; Then, just one more collection before I tackle any new editions. As I will be 75 soon, I can but hope that old age and Covid-19 will keep me alive long enough. <<wry bardic grin>>

Meanwhile ...

love autumn. I don't find it a depressing season. The incredible colours of turning leaves never fail to fill me with passion along the lines of optimism, hope, and defiance even at a time of sadness for the beginnings of endings … 

However hard a winter we may endure, we can always look forward to a kinder spring and new beginnings, such is the way of the natural world, ours too if we but let ourselves access the kinder human spirit; religion does not have a monopoly on

spirituality. (As regular readers know, I do not subscribe to any religion as such, although I do relate very strongly to Pantheists who see God as nature, rather than its creator.)



AUTUMNAL LIFE FORCES 

In a garden spread with dead leaves
and heads of flowers,
I once heard tales told by a dying rose
soon to breathe its last,
about a Man in Red passing through
the world, scaring us
like the Bogey Man in hiding
under a child's bed, pretending to roar
like a dragon up for sport,
despite as vulnerable a heartbeat
as an ageing pet

Neither young nor old, a Man in Red
wears buttons of gold
on a coat the colour of blushing cheeks
at our making a faux pas,
made to look as small as a toy dragon
under the bed, where dawn
is prologue to adventure and sunset
fingers of blood, though 
we'll be safe enough tucked away
in bed, free to dream, and tomorrow
is another day ... 

According to the rose, the Man in Red
has kindly ways, in spite 
of inviting cloud and wind to feed 
on gentle trees,
rip them bare while a few songbirds
dare to watch and wonder
how sounds of war become songs 
of peace, fear become joy,
leaving a friendly Sandman free
to paint over the bleakest scenarios
with bold colours
 

"He comes for us all, and we must depart,
to engage forever with the human heart."

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2020

[Note: Photo taken from the Internet. An earlier version of this poem appears under the title 'Autumn is a Man in Red' in Accomplices to Illusion by R, N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]

 

 

 

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Sunday 6 September 2020

Autumn, Season of Silences

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

Today’s poem first appeared on the blog in 2013.


When barely spring here in the UK, it is already autumn in some parts of the world. An Australian reader living and working in London one spring and ‘feeling homesick’ once asked for an autumn poem. [I lived in Australia once, a long time ago, and would love to go back as fate had it in for me at the time and I wasn't able to stay long. Sadly, travel insurance due to my prostate cancer and other health issues is prohibitive so I suspect I never will.]

There is a dreamy quality about autumn that, for me, is like listening to unspoken poems, a spirited silence that no other season can quite match, even a feisty spring or gregarious summer, as if it is loath to go into a winter sleep likely to subdue its silence if not its spirit ...

AUTUMN, SEASON OF SILENCES 

One long, lovely summer
once I spent with you
till fallen angels broke cover;
enter autumn, on cue

Our time together near over,
we were as leaves
on a grieving sycamore
falling like tears

Drifting, piling on a grave
of broken promises,
all the love we’ll never have
for all our kisses

Saddest of autumn dreams,
unspoken poems

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2020

[Note: This poem was first published in an anthology, Shades of Autumn, Anchor Books [Forward Press] 2004 and subsequently in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005]


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Saturday 5 September 2020

An Autumn Reverie

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

Today’s poem first appeared on the blog in 2017.

As a student of English and American literature (early 50 years ago … oo-err!) at the University of Kent in Canterbury in the 1970’s, I enjoyed reading the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I dipped into his Notebooks and could as easily relate to this entry then as now notwithstanding a mobility problem and my coming up to 75 years-old.

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."  - Nathaniel Hawthorne [Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]

 AN AUTUMN REVERIE

Autumn leaves on a lake
caught like flies in a spidery web
of glittering sunlight

Breaking free in a breeze,
skimming feisty ripples, courtesy
of a north-westerly wind

Some taking off, low fly past
over sad trees standing at attention
for once-time companions

Others, caught in a sudden lull,
returned to the lake or as prodigals
to the earth’s safe-keeping

Somewhere, woodlands sounding
its Last Post by way of acknowledging
all its seasoned veterans

Glittering sunlight on a lake,
dead leaves like flies in a spidery web,
observers lost in thought

Copyright R. N. Taber 2017; 2020

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Wednesday 20 November 2019

Autumn Leaves OR Mind-Body-Spirit, No Stranger to the Fall

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

A new poem today, taking shape in my head as I looked out over a garden covered with fallen leaves, recalling another time,another place, another you-me-us...

We all get angry sometimes, even take it out on loved ones who resent  harsh words they do not deserve while we, in turn, resent their giving as good as they get.

Life is too short and love too precious to slam the door on reconciliation as, sadly, so many of us do...until we feel a pressing need to open the damn door, only to discover we have left it too late and pride really does come before a fall ...

AUTUMN LEAVES or MIND-BODY-SPIRIT, NO STRANGER TO THE FALL

Autumn leaves,
like love letters on my lawn
reminding me...
you're gone, never to return
since we parted
with angry words, duellers,
swords drawn

Autumn leaves,
like tears on the same pillows
we once shared...
where now I but toss and turn,
yearning for you,
for our lovemaking sublime,
dream come true

Autumn leaves,
like dreams in a blustery wind,
as if telling me
to my face, what a fool am I
having let you go
without letting you know
I need you so

Autumn leaves,
like a shower of confetti on us
in celebration
of paradise regained, our love
declared a winner,
anger, self-confessed loser,
duel over

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019; 2020

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Wednesday 10 September 2014

Autumn Sonata


(Photo taken from the Internet)

For me, September is the start of autumn…whatever the weather people or the almanacs say.

Here’s my favourite autumn villanelle. It was first published in an anthology, Seasons of Change, Anchor Books [Forward Press] 2003 and subsequently in my collection.

Villanelles are not as easy to write as they look. Regular readers will know I have a passion for them and won’t be surprised to learn that I have written 200+. I try to vary style and content in my poetry and am always experimenting with voices. Even so, the villanelle remains a firm favourite of mine if only because its simplicity is far from simplistic and I get a sense of achievement from keeping to the discipline it imposes on a poet. Feedback suggests that some readers love them and others hate them, which is as it should be.

Left entirely to my own devices, I am inclined to waffle and have even been known to mix my metaphors. Oh, dear! Now, villanelles clear my head. They keep the inner eye focused on the straight and narrow if multidimensional paths along which a poet loves travel across uncharted territories of the mind, hopefully with his or her readers for company at various stages of the journey.


AUTUMN SONATA

Silvery grey skies,
leaves drifting,
summer closing its eyes

Lighting home fires,
hopes flaring
silvery grey skies

Holiday goodbyes,
wishful thinking,
summer closing its eyes

Words to the wise,
softly treading
silvery grey skies

With long, wistful sighs
and daydreaming,
summer closing its eyes

Time quickly passing,
our hopes surprising
silvery grey skies,
summer closing its eyes

[From: The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]


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