Ode to Spring

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

The poem first appeared in an anthology, A Natural Way of Thinking, Poetry Now [Forward Press] 2003 and subsequently in my collection.

Now, it is spring and who wants to think about anything else but celebrating love and nature?  

Reader ‘Marian J’ contacted me some time ago to say she especially likes this poem ‘because my love for spring gets me through even the worst winters.’ That goes for me, too, Marian.

ODE TO SPRING 

I heard you laughing on a summer wind,

telling the world about me,

how you made me fall in love with you

then said you wanted to be free;

I couldn’t make you change your mind…

You said I’m really not the kind

for you, I should find someone new,

left me alone and blue

Memories, a summer breeze

I heard you crying in a winter wind

telling the world about us,

how we fell and threw our love away

like autumn leaves;

I couldn’t make you change your mind…

You said you’re really not the kind

for me, and I should find someone new,

had to let you go

No peace of mind, winter wind

I’m laughing now it’s spring again,

telling the world about you,

how I went down on my knees today

whispered a prayer or two;

I can’t believe you changed your mind…

You said, we’re two of a kind

after all, so let's see if we can’t find

a way through

Spring sunshine, siding with us

Copyright R N Taber 2004, 2019

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from the original as it appears in  The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004]

Variations On A Theme

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

Hello from London UK.

I am fine, folks, (thanks to many of you for asking) but feeling very tired again after another restless night. [For the benefit on first time readers, I am being treated for prostate cancer and doing okay.] .

Now, my late mother was always singing around the house and there was a time I thought it was because she was happy. In later years, I realized that she sang to think herself into happy mode; singing, for her, was a kind of escapism just as reading was for us both. My mother always wanted us to be a happy family unit, which we never truly were. I mostly blamed my late father, but I dare say he and my brother would put the blame on me.

I stopped playing the blame game years ago and can see now that I was not an easy child to live with. I suffered from depression (no one acknowledged depression in children then) that brought on awful migraines. In addition, I had significant hearing loss that no one ever appreciated, including me, until I was much older. As a teenager, being removed from my childhood friends at 14 years-old and forced to live in a god-awful backwater called Hoo (in Kent) did not help, especially as it coincided with my realizing I am gay; gay relationships would not be decriminalized for a few years yet.

Yes, I was a ‘difficult’ child and youth although no one knew just how troubled I was. [My perception is that family members sit down and talk to each other even less than we did then so heaven help future generations!] The only surprise about my having a severe nervous breakdown in my early 30’s was that it hadn’t occurred years earlier. It was a messy business. By then my mother was dead and neither my father nor brother ever asked me for my side of events that took place during that terrible time. They made assumptions and I was expected to live with them. I recovered sufficiently to find another job nearly three years later, but it took me a good ten years or so to recover fully and get my life back on track. [Even so, my breakdown still haunts me just as those closet years of awakening sexuality always will.]

There was something very wistful about my mother’s singing, yet positive too; it helped her rise above the trials and tribulations of everyday family life just as writing helps me. How many of us, I wonder, find similar outlets for their frustrations? For my own part, as regular readers will know, writing as an art form comes a poor second to its means to a very effective form of self-help therapy.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

One long-ago spring,

I heard an old flower seller

hum a song my mother

would always sing to me

whenever I felt sad

and lonely, evoking a line

from a poem about

a pretty robin left sobbing

(for all innocence?) as autumn
starts to turn

I was so innocent then,

listening to Mother singing

a song to lift my heart

though I’d often wonder

why it sounded so sad

and lonely, like the flower

in a poem, rejected

for pretty rose tree blooms
begging a poet’s eye find excuses 

for its thorns

One long-ago winter,

I heard another flower seller

hum the song my mother

still sings to me whenever

I miss her, feel so sad

and lonely for no one even

trying to see how it is;

song, mother, child, robin,

rose, poet, poem…but variations

on a common theme

Life forms, art forms, companions

to wishful thinking

Copyright R. N. Taber 2013

[Note: References to ‘a poem’ in stanzas 1 and 2 relate to The Blossom and My Petty Rose Tree  found among William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, but whether or not readers are familiar with these should (hopefully) make little or no difference to any appreciation of the poem.]

Between Wars

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

Since 2001 I have introduced all my books with, ‘Colour, creed, sex, sexuality…these are but part of a whole; it is the whole that counts.’

Now, I was recently informed by someone ‘in the know’ that it is politically incorrect to say ‘colour’ and I should say ‘ethnicity’ instead.

Having asked various people from various ethnic backgrounds how they feel about it, none said they were offended and most agreed it was yet another example of political correctness gone mad. One woman told me, “You’re white and I’m black. What’s offensive about that?  As for ethnicity, as far as I’m concerned, my ethnicity is the same as yours. I was born in London into a family of third generation immigrants. Yes, I’m proud of my great grandparents’ roots. But my roots are right here in London. Besides, I’ve got better things to do than take offence where none is meant. In any case, it’s not what you say that matters but how you say it, right?’

She is so right, as far as I’m concerned, but please feel free to email me [rogertab@aol.com] if you have any thoughts on this.

Meanwhile…

Today's poem has appeared on the blog before and is one of several that I am reinstating; it was inspired by a conversation with someone waiting for a loved one to return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Unable to live with the stress, my companion had sought comfort with someone else until realising that comfort is no substitute for love. It took a while, but she worked at getting her marriage back on track. She and her husband are expecting their first child in the summer.

The poem is dedicated to all those serving in armed forces abroad, regardless of ethnicity, creed, sex or sexuality, and to their loved ones waiting for them to return home, some, of whom, of course, may not...

BETWEEN WARS

In a fairy tale wood,

dwarfed by leafy towers,

we planted seeds,

watched for flowers;

none did we see

that childlike summer

you promised me a love

to last forever

You went to war

(Iraq then Afghanistan);

I found another,

my heart a safer haven;

broken promise,

a fairy tale shot dead

for a soldier, kill or else  

be killed...

One night I dreamed

I ran among ruined towers

where dragons roared,

giants trampling flowers…

What of our seeds?

I had to save them or try;

nature’s needs abandoned,

like love, will die?

Truth to learn,

nature leaving no choice

but to return,

listen out for its voice

where leafy towers

like rousing sermons rise,

clouds rehearsing love songs

in lonely skies

All was much the same

(restored, glittering towers)

as you called my name

through late summer tears…

Back to war you’ll go,

yet never leave me, watching

love bloom, grow, anticipating

every homecoming

[Note: First  published under the title 'Never Leave Me' in Tracking the Torchbearer by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]

Going the Distance

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

I have written several poems about my feelings regarding my having been diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2011; it is not thought to be aggressive, and ‘more of a pussycat than a tiger’ according to my consultant. .

A neighbour (who chose a different course of action) thinks I am ‘courting death’ by changing my mind about having radiotherapy and settling for hormone therapy. He could well be right of course. It is certainly not a decision that would suit everyone. Nor, I have to say, is it one that I have taken lightly. However, I don’t see my decision as courting death, but courting life. Indeed, basic instinct tells me (as it did before I panicked and opted for treatment) that I have a good few years left in me yet. Besides, it is a fact that more men die with prostate cancer then from it. Yes, I could be making a mistake. Let’s hope I’m not, yeah?

Where there’s life there’s love, and where there’s love that’s enough for me. I may not have a partner now, but I still love him; others, too, who have been or still are in my life. I trust them and Earth Mother to see me through as I run time's gamut, sustained by happy memories and creating new ones that may well see me in good stead as I cross the ultimate dividing line that both separates and unites us all.

“Time is the longest distance between two places.” 
― Tennessee Williams - The Glass Menagerie

GOING THE DISTANCE

Death comes to us all,
even if its when, where, how
but as hands on a clock
inviting us to rustle up good times,
and serve them to Memory,
always up for any leftovers
from a favourite dish created
with loving hands, saying more
than any words  

Tick-tock, tick-tock,
hands of an alarm clock usually
moving too fast for us
even as we relax in each other’s arms
after making time for love
before the work ethic demands
we answer its call,
steer a course as best we can
to its shores 

Tick-tock, tick-tock,
hands of cloud clocks inviting us
to run races we cannot win,
but can still have fun for earning a place
in the eternal role call
of winners, losers and also-rans
reeled off by commentators
making love to their microphones
in soundproof boxes 

Life embraces us all,
though we appear to be caught up
in the when-and-why
of various notches on multiple clock faces
forever winding us up
and defying us to get the better 
of time, feed a consciousness
eager for any leftovers from dishes
created with loving hands 

[London: August 5th 2011] 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2011, 2019

 

Reassurance

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

Today’s poem was written in 2011 and was first published in an anthology, Fear Itself, Forward Press, 2012.

In the 1980's I spent a couple of years working as a librarian with the local Home Library Service that visits housebound people unable to get to a local library. One of my customers was a lady well into her nineties, all of whose family and friends had died. She was a lovely lady; with soft, silvery hair and the most beautiful skin I have ever seen on an old person; she must have been a real beauty in her younger years.

The group of people with whom I worked visited the same people every three weeks in a mobile library van and we got to know some of them well. I asked this lady once if she was ever lonely. ‘Of course,’ she replied in a hauntingly musical voice. ‘I miss my friends and family, but I have my reading, my music and can look out on my garden and enjoy nature and wildlife. They are always reminding me that life is precious, but nothing lasts forever. I used to worry about dying alone, but not now. The garden will know when my time comes. The flowers and trees, birds, butterflies, and even the grey squirrels will see me through whatever lies in store for me. Earth Mother will remember me when I’m no longer here, even if no one else does....’

At the time, I thought it was a very romantic thing to say, but that’s all. I know better now.

Whatever their ethnicity, creed, gender or sexuality, people of my generation and older (I am 67) who don’t have a partner, for whatever reason, often tell me they get scared sometimes of growing old alone and dying alone. I can relate to that although I rose above such fears some time ago. 

Yes, I have occasional lapses of confidence and start to panic, but only have to look out of my window at the garden below or go for a walk along the canal or on Hampstead Heath to feel reassured. Even city life plays host to nature if not on the same scale as the countryside.

In later years, especially after I turned sixty, I realized it was unlikely I would meet anyone else with whom I’d want to spend the rest of my life.

I confess I grew more and more apprehensive about growing old and being on my own. Yes, I have some good friends, but who’s to say who will outlive whom? For a while, I found little comfort even in my close affinity with nature. Indeed, I became more than a little apprehensive about the future. I got scared, really scared.

Ah, yes, but not now….for human nature has a healing power of its own; it is called positive thinking. besides, whenever I contemplate the inspiring beauty of the natural world, I feel a sense of peace that lifts me above any negative feelings that might try to sneak in, not least regarding my prostate cancer ...

Years ago, I asked a neighbour, a keen gardener who had lost a leg in a car accident, how he managed to stay so cheerful all the time. "That be down to nature," he said with broad grin, "Do well by Earth Mother, and she'll do well by you," adding with an infectious laugh as he caught me glancing at his artificial leg, "She can't be held responsible for bad drivers, now, can she, eh? A rock, she be, and no mistake, a reassuring presence, just when you need one the most. While all around you are busy quoting from some Gloomsday Book, she be actually there for you." He returned to pruning his roses, humming cheerfully away, while I returned to my book; I barely gave a second thought at the time to  to words that would play a central part in my life and poetry in the years ahead.

REASSURANCE 

There was a fear in me

that became terror as I grew older,

of being left alone,

family and friends long gone,

dying on my own

I could not sleep at night

for the grip on me this terror had,

a living nightmare,

nowhere to go, no one to share

so much as a tear

One sunset, in my garden,

watching fluffy pink clouds drift by,

a nightingale’s song

captured the sheer joy of living,

an eternity of loving

I felt Earth Mother’s arms

take me in a strong, intimate embrace,

a presence reassuring,

sense of rest and peace enduring,

no dark dreaming

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012

View from a Church Window

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

Today’s poem is an early poem albeit slightly revised. Having been partially deaf since  childhood, I possibly developed a perceptive inner ear at an early age. At the same time, I became increasingly aware of other people’s inner deafness.

Kissing Gate

VIEW FROM A CHURCH WINDOW

There’s a thrill of blossom

on the old tree,

a greeny-white chirrup

of noise bouncing

gently, like a rubber ball at play

in child hands

Every nuance of creation

about the old tree

tuned to perfection, you and me 

shaking our heads

at confetti coming down on us

like acid rain

A hymn to life, its beauty!

Leaves, wind wafers

tongued, but oh so lightly

at the kissing gate 

over there, inviting all humanity,

to love and let love

Here,taking a dimmer view

of immortality

as we pass our seasons by,

grown deaf  to each leaf,

rarely (if ever) making time

to wonder why

Copyright R. N. Taber 1997; 2013

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised from an earlier version that appeared in several poetry magazines between 1997-2000 and an anthology, Changing Seasons, Poetry Today [Forward Press] 1998 and subsequently in Love and Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2000.]

In Harm's Way

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

Some readers have commented on my profile photo that was taken by a friend, Christopher King who is also a professional photographer. He also took the b/w photo it replaces. I was delighted with both, especially as I am not very photogenic. You can find more about Chris at:

http://www.christopherking.org/

Meanwhile...

We all have a force for love on the inside looking out for us. Whether or not we pay it much attention, it records everything we do, good or bad, for better or worse. Moreover, it is a permanent archive, available for reference by anyone who may be interested in searching for more than just proof that we ever existed…among the lower as well as higher profiles in history’s much doctored pages.

This poem is a kenning.

IN HARMS WAY

I fly where eagles dare,

tread where hungry lions feed;

among all my enemies,

it’s of short sightedness I most

have cause to be afraid,

that legacy living histories

designed to weaken

if not the bring down the pillars

of its communities

I swim with dolphins

to lead humankind to safe shores,

away from sharks

sniffing for blood in deceptively

still waters,

befriending those beguiled

by a killing tide’s moon

or having taken on high noon

without back-up

I run with hares from foxes,

if less likely to mistake the fortitude

of tortoises for folly

than the less perceptive human being

is inclined to perceive poverty

for weakness or taking pleasure

in those simpler pursuits

cash can’t buy (nor ever will)

as throwing the race

I am that vulnerable mind-body-spirit

shaped by life, seduced by art

Copyright R. N. Taber 2011