A Passion for Trees

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

Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008 and has been  especially requested by ‘Jack and Louise’ for ‘[our] son Michael and his partner Jonathan.’

So the  poem talks of gay love…so what? Love is love is love just as a poem is a poem is a poem and - most importantly of all - a person is a person is a person. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Oh, but the tales a tree can tell...if we but care to listen!

The famous opening lines of ‘Trees’ by American writer, Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) s may well spring to mind:

‘I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree...’

Photo: An ash tree.

A PASSION FOR TREES

There’s a tree in a field

that sings me a love song

every time I’m sitting

where it rises from the ground;

listen, and you’ll hear

the lyric of a love song hanging

on a dream lost and found

By a tree in a field

we wrote our first love song,

bodies entwining

as we lay there on the ground,

sharing with the birds

such joy, such passion, hanging

on a dream lost and found

There’s a tree in a field

that watched us kiss and part,

not daring to believe

as we lay there on the ground

how gay love might

survive a world left but hanging

on dreams lost and found

To a tree in a field

we returned to write a love song,

bodies entwining

as we lay there on the ground,

sharing with the birds

such joy, such passion, a waking

dream lost and found

Copyright R. N. Taber 2008

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]

Dunster, Marking Time

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

I have written many ‘place’ poems; places I have visited and with which I have fallen in love. Always hopeless at taking photographs, I try to absorb my surroundings and later compose a poem to reflect them.

Now, I love Somerset so was delighted when reader ‘Kathy’ in New Zealand got in touch recently to say how thrilled she was to come across my poem Dunster, Marking Time on the blog as she was born there. It appears her family migrated to New Zealand in the 1970s. Since I have not posted the poem since 2008 it is good to know that some readers enjoy browsing the archives.

The poem first appeared on the BBC Somerset site which is worth exploring and will also take you to my poem on another picturesque village, Watchet, closely associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/somerset/content/articles/2008/06/04/dunster_poem_feature.shtml

For good measure, I am also posting Classic Somerset inspired by R. D. Blackmore’s classic novel Lorna Doone; the poem appears in my latest collection Tracking the Torchbearer.

As well as being a very beautiful part of the UK, Somerset is also steeped in history and some of you may care to look it up on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset

DUNSTER, MARKING TIME

Come clouds of steam or sea mist,

its castle ghosts watch over

Dunster village, shore and forest

Yarn market shell among the best,

(hear buyers and sellers barter)

come clouds of steam or sea mist

Where Benedictines have blessed

history’s customary makeover;

Dunster, village, shore and forest

At a water mill its days have kissed,

engage with past and future,

come clouds of steam or sea mist

Where packhorses once crossed

and nuns offered up a prayer;

Dunster village, shore and forest

Where Doomesday stories persist,

along the Avill river…

come clouds of steam or sea mist,

Dunster village, shore and forest

[Dunster, Somerset, May 2008]

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

 Photo: 17th century Yarn Market, Dunster

 CLASSIC SOMERSET

Doone valley, classic fiction

for holiday images

conjuring true inspiration

Come any with a predilection

for turning nature’s pages;

Doone valley, classic fiction

At Badgworthy Water, listen

out for Carver’s rages

conjuring true inspiration

At Earth Mother’s invitation,

share a Love of Ages;

Doone valley, classic fiction

Celebration of Lorna and John

(birds singing their praises)

conjuring true inspiration

Cream teas teasing imagination

to revisit R. D’s pages;

Doone valley, classic fiction

conjuring true inspiration

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]

  Photo: This bridge marks the boundary between Somerset and Devon in Doone Valley.

 [Please Note: My poetry collections are only on sale in the UK but anyone can order (signed) copies from me at a generous blogger discount. For details, contact rogertab@aol.com with ‘Blog reader’ or Poetry collection’ in the subject field.]

Poor Sparrow

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

While this overcrowded island of ours badly needs more (affordable) housing, we must protect what remains of our green and pleasant land. So many birds are losing their natural habitats. This is not only bad news for the, but bad news for us too.

Let’s all speak up to save our trees and woodlands, and make sure there are always green fields nearby for everyone to enjoy, especially our children, and wildlife too… 

POOR SPARROW

Once a village, quickly became a town;

green fields now a housing estate

where we lowered poor sparrow down

In lanes we’d watch the harvest sown,

now highways, commuters running late;

once a village, quickly became a town

Of daisies a tree nymph’s spring gown

within creak, squeak, of a trellis gate

where we lowered poor sparrow down

More peace and quiet than ever known,

though small politics its fishwives berate;

once a village, quickly became a town

Office blocks where kites once flown,

nature’s finest gone for cheapskate

where we lowered poor sparrow down

Long years past, we children grown,

memories like sunlight on wet roof slate;

once a village, quickly became a town

where we lowered poor sparrow down

[From: Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

Best (Free) Seats at the Opera

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

Reader ‘Sahira’ has kindly been in touch to say how much she especially enjoys my nature poems. Many thanks for that, encouragement always gratefully received. Sahira has also asked for more information about the Cheddar Gorge after viewing the videos posted on my You Tube Channel + poems: http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

(Click on ‘browse videos’ and scroll to Cheddar Gorge clips 1, 2, and 3.)

More about the Cheddar Gorge on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Gorge

Meanwhile…

Today's poem has been significantly revised since its last appearance on the blog in March 2011 while (hopefully) giving the reader food for thought regarding our relationship with nature, for better or worse. We have not been kind to nature nor is nature always kind to us, yet together we make a good team. Could it be that we are not so different after all, but two sides of the same life-force?

BEST (FREE) SEATS AT THE OPERA 

Music in the air, timeless songs

we only ever hear

for listening out for birds, bees,

and summer showers

wherever tree-ushers gesture

mind-body-spirit takes its place

in the front row

Though humankind try to copy,

modify or destroy,

it can but fail to silence songs

Earth Mother teaches

her children from seedlings

(if never on time at rehearsals)

for the Opera of Life

Lights down, only Pan’s pipes

keeping us reflective

until the next act begins. puts us

through our paces,

gives imagination its head,

as per  humanity’s predilection

for performance art

Though we be deaf, blind, dumb,

the Spirit of Nature 

can be felt and passed on by all,

come the sun by day 

or the moon by night, if only

for treading footprints of live clay

left by dead poets

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

Poems By Passing Clouds & The Challenge (2 poems)

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

I posted a ‘Cloudscape’ video on You Tube yesterday and read one of my ‘cloud’ poems (The Challenge) over it: http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

As I only posted The Challenge here in February, I am repeating another ‘cloud’ poem that has not appeared on the blog since 2010.

Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK. Here’s hoping that if you love clouds even half as much as I do, you will enjoy these poems…

POEMS BY PASSING CLOUDS

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear

and even beasts and birds

never learn the words,

can but live by the descant

of hungry young in spring,

butterfly wings in summer,

falling leaves in autumn winds

bin bag puppies in winter

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear,

no matter that humankind

imposes its own lyrics

(poor carbon copies passing

for popular reflections in

some subway busker’s eye)

sure to become global classics

since they make people cry

Some songs in the wind

only the trees ever hear,

will never let on they know

or beast and bird give up

on a world that humankind

likes to make out it knows

but dare not face the wind

with its, oh, so pathetic untruths,

lyrics sure to blow the mind

There’s a song in the wind

only the trees ever hear

about nature’s secret ways;

life, death, misadventure,

why it’s the good die young

more often than not, while

the old pressure the rest of us

not to forget long-ago, kinder days

but take a leaf from the trees

There’s a song in every tree

running rings around history

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010. 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010; slightly rev. 7/19]

 THE CHALLENGE

There is a bridge between clouds

where we pause

who ponder on the purpose

on living just to die,

where the spirit unfulfilled,

the heart strayed

across certain boundaries society

has imposed (conventions)

so much the better to disguise

its worst intentions

There is a bridge between clouds

where we pause

who ask why the world below

has let us down…or did we

let ourselves and each other down

in the end

for never ceasing to demand more

than our fair share

of whatever peace and love

to be found there?

There is a bridge between clouds

where we’ll wait

our turn to cross…or be left

wishing deeds undone,

words unsaid, lies left creeping

under the tongue,

never to see the cold light of a day

when we must answer

to all its invidious shadows

may have heard us say

We can but cross, we children of Earth,

rise to the challenge of life over death

Copyright R. N. Taber 1984; 2010

A Little Light Rain

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

Today's poem has not appeared on the blog since 2008, a good enough reason I thought to give it an airing for those readers who may have missed it.

Now, it is often said, love is blind. True, love can be blind. Worse still, though, is the participant in a relationship who inflicts that blindness on his or her partner for their own selfish ends.

It can happen to a couple on the home front or political allies on the front line. 

That's life...a force for love that can make or break the human spirit. Thankfully, the latter is blessed with incredible powers of self-healing if not always quick to come into play.... 

A LITTLE LIGHT RAIN

The night I died, you cried over me

tears that lied, for it was never

meant to be that we’d have forever

though spring, summer, autumn,

winter years promising an eternity

of love to be tucked up in some

time capsule buried in Epping Forest

for total strangers to chance upon

in darker centuries come and gone

than knew that love once lived here,

a progressive world’s brief to let it die,

pick its flowers, rework its songs

It’s the power of love mends fences,

heals wounds but better, you said,

to let the dogs of war have their day,

grab a lion’s share of spoils not ours,

make good the tools mercenaries leave

for other predators to fight over where

they have spilt red wine on the best

tablecloths left like out of date maps

in a White House kitchen, reflections

on a love and peace stacked up among

other dirty laundry and washing-up

Who are we to let slip an opportunity

to sit at table with kings and queens,

presidents, prime ministers, whatever

religious leaders flavour of the day,

at parties to which we’re not invited

but by default, permitted to have our say

if only to seal a bargain, prove a point,

make outlaws of good people or heroes

of a portraiture long dead and gone,

unable to tell how it was, likely to go on

playing the chameleon?

Ah, I know you by your crocodile tears;

your face appears in glossy magazines

and billboards in every High Street

telling us what we should do or not do,

say or not say, eat or not eat, in case

we start to think for ourselves, even see

our spreadsheets inclined to agree

with an underlying trend of inhumanity;

Heaven forbid, anyone come to know

that wherever the lies your tears tell fall

only weeds will ever grow

It takes but a little acid rain in the eye

to blind us to hypocrisy

[From: Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]

A Feeling For Love-Hate Relationships

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

Some readers may be interested to know that a new serial begins on my fiction blog today. Sacrilege was first published in the UK in 2008 and is Book Two in a planned trilogy Blasphemy-Sacrilege-Redemption. [Book Three has been delayed through illness but I hope to finish writing it in time to serialise it on the blog next year before publishing the entire trilogy as e-editions on Google Play.]

http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.com

Meanwhile…

Can we really love and hate at the same time? I think so, yes. Some people (and places) make us SO mad sometimes, yet we love them to bits.

I hate London much of the time, especially these days as it is so overcrowded, yet I miss it as a lover misses his or her partner whenever I am away for long.  Certainly, too, I have discovered it is possible to hate certain people almost as much as loving them. They are weighty words, love and hate. I suspect we use them too freely in the course of everyday conversation, indeed as we journey through life.

There are even more abstract forms of love hate-relationships, too, which nonetheless have a bearing on our lives; we may well prefer to avoid them, but such is our need for them that we have little or no choice but to engage with them now and then. Mind you, any thanks for their timely intervention is likely to be more than a shade mixed with resentment for our feeling  unable to resists engaging with them at all; much the same principle applies to many if not most love-hate relationships turn…

This poem is a kenning.

A FEELING FOR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIPS

Oh, but I will always try
to be there for you whenever
I am needed,
keep my distance when it feels
more appropriate,
listen whenever you need an ear,
and support you
where the heart makes a pitch
for centre-stage

Oh, but I will always try
to look into your head should
you turn against me
in the intense heat of emotions
setting themselves
against us (for whatever reason)
descending to a wintry chill
and left unacknowledged between
cracks in thin ice

Oh, but I will always try
to bring you gently down to earth
when fine ideals fly
in the face of temporal priorities
primed to shoot down
any aspirations of a human spirit
likely to blow a hole
in the arms budget, and give peace
a fighting chance

Agreed cover for home truths and lies,
I pass for the Spirit of Compromise

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012