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.

Friday 31 March 2017

A Life in the Day of a Couch Potato


A reader, Helen, has kindly written in to say she and her family enjoy my poetry and she thinks my blogs I deserve more followers. Well, thanks a lot, Helen, encouragement is always welcome. Poetry, though, is not everyone’s cup of tea and I am just happy that the blogs are still going strong after six years via my Google Plus site that links to new and historical posts/poems. I have set the statistics so Google does not count my own views; this gives me a clearer picture of readership. 

Now, today’s little poem was written way back in 1979. Sadly, it strikes me as being even more relevant now than it was then. A neighbour had been complaining to me about retirement, saying how he missed ‘the buzz of real life’ because all there was for the likes of retired people was a second hand existence by courtesy of television and cinema. I suggested keeping up with friends, getting out and about and doing things, going places…pleasures for which we often have little or no time when working full-time and/or bringing up a family…? (Mind you, we need to make time.) He simply shrugged and went indoors to watch an afternoon soap opera.

No, I’m not knocking TV, or the fact that we live in a Digital Age, but now I am retired myself, I enjoy keeping up with friends, getting out and about and doing things, going places…the simple pleasures for which it was often hard making time for when working.

Following a bad fall in summer 2014, I was housebound for months and spent a good year or so learning to walk again. I live alone so TV was a great comfort and companionship (of sorts) in between writing up the blogs, three sessions of (ten) physiotherapy exercises a day and chatting to friends who were kind enough to drop by and help out on a regular basis all the while I could barely walk. I missed getting out and about and do so now as much as I can; even though walking is still quite painful, I have a sturdy oak walking stick, and it is always worth making the effort.

So when I talk to young people rushing home to spend hours on social media, I can’t help feeling they are missing out…

No, I am not knocking on-line social networking, but there can be no substitute for real-life, face to face companionship and banter among friends, not to mention getting out and about in the sunshine…can there? Now I am older (71) and less mobile, it is harder to get out and about and meet people, but (still) always worth making the effort.

Social media. the world wide web, TV...all have a place in our lives, of course they do, but no one's real life balance should be tipped in their favour...surely?

Yes, cyber fun can be good fun, but there's no fun quite like sharing fun in the real-life company of friends, forming and developing interpersonal skills that can teach us as much about ourselves as other people, and will see us though the best part of a lifetime. Oh, and it really isn't a case of you can't teach an old dog new (digital) tricks; this old dog knows a few, and all the better for having learned a good few of the non-digital variety...

A LIFE IN THE DAY OF A COUCH POTATO

Little birds singing on the garden wall

I’ll not write you up;
you’re, too sentimental
for the Age, they say

As one to another you brightly call

I’ll shut the window;
a new soap opera's about
to start on TV  

Bright sunlight distorting everything

Screen-lined faces
like grotesque cartoons
in a Hall of Mirrors

Let's close the curtains, better already

Comfortable now...
with armchair perspectives
on the world

Copyright R. N. Taber 2001; 2017

[Note: This poem has been revised since it first appeared under the title 'To a Sunny Day' in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001.]

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Tuesday 1 March 2016

The Yellow Balloon

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

Children across the world are expected to take its worst tantrums in their stride, but for how long…?

For the many caught up in its conflicts, the world must often seem a bleak place, any worthwhile future, for them at least, an all but impossible dream.

Of course, it is not all doom and gloom, but children should not have to snatch at happiness as and when they can; it should be the greater part of growing up. Yes, even playtime has its ups and downs, good times and bad, but that’s life, a learning curve for all of us at any age. 

True, the world today is a dangerous place, but children need to be reasonably prepared for, not scared of it. Besides, is not having to deal with parental and peer pressures enough without having to contend with being made to feel they are a disappointment for not fully participating in someone else’s second hand life or, far worse, struggling to survive a war zone? 

Whatever, indeed, happened to playtime?

THE YELLOW BALLOON 

Children
playing with a yellow balloon,
mothers calling   
back home, as a mocking wind 
snatches it from tiny fingers,
dispatching it to drift mottled skies
weepy with satire?

Children
chasing after a yellow balloon,
father calling
back home, but they play deaf
among innocent cries
inciting adventures, welcome respite
from secrets and lies

Children
trying to catch a yellow balloon
beyond either reach or ken,
no sense of direction, quickly
consumed by angry skies,
menaced by cloud figures waving
smoking guns

Children
observed in tears over a balloon
burst by a phoenix
rising from its everyday ashes
to heavens where sunlight
last seen glancing off shrapnel
slowly killing them

Children, in near and faraway places
picking up the pieces…

Copyright R. N. Taber 2009

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