Years ago, when I first came out, I confided to a friend that, although I had no regrets, I wasn’t confident that I had what it takes to survive a gay life as it was all a bit scary.
Thankfully, it did not take me long to realise there is no such thing as a ‘gay life’, only life, and it’s down to each and every one of us to make the most of it. We are all individuals so that ‘most’ will be different for each and every one of us just as different parts will make up different wholes; some parts may even stay out of reach, but if we don’t keep reaching for the whole, we might as well be dead.
As for survival, everything we do and say is like pollen on the wind and as likely as not will plant itself in someone’s mind, someone’s heart, somewhere; it may grow or die, but the chances are it will grow since it found its way there in the first place. And so it goes on, as it has always gone on...until some idiot decides to put the Armageddon Theory to the ultimate test. And then...?
Who knows? It’s anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, let’s pollinate and create as evergreen a landscape as we can, yeah? Maybe that way no one will ever want to find out if the story of humanity has an ending at all, happy or otherwise.
I once sulkily remarked to a teacher after being humiliated in front of the whole class for talking during an English lesson that I thought imagination was a load of bollocks. I was expecting to be told off again. Instead, the teacher simply shrugged and said, ‘If you want a load of bollocks to babysit you through life, Taber, a load a bollocks is probably what you’ll deserve.’ At the time, I laughed, but those wise words have haunted me for half a century. I hope that, by repeating them here, they won’t die with me when the Grim Reaper pays a visit any more than they died with him.
Oh, but there's no place like home...
THE BABYSITTER
A light shade above my head
casts a pear shaped shadow
swaying like a cradle to and fro
To and fro, a bored babysitter,
privy to an over anxious moth
seeking maternal reassurance
A door slams, rocking the cradle
as if it were a bully sneaked in
from the Outside, surprising us
Inside, we panic, the moth and I
losing our grip on the ceiling,
it flying off, leaving me to freefall
The pear follows me, catches me,
wraps me in its skin, protective
of its, oh, so vulnerable Insiders
The bully shakes a fist, frustrated
by an inability to impose its will
on either human or winged cousin
Quivering quietly, a sense of peace
ascends if lending a false sense
of security to its baby-in-the-pear
Moth glues itself to the light shade;
I, indifferently, turn the light out
and glue myself to a silken branch
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010
[Note: This poem will appear in my new collection Tracking the Torchbearer scheduled for publication here in the UK in the spring; readers (including overseas) will be able to purchase direct from me.]
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