A reader recently contacted me to say, ‘You really do have a thing about willow trees, don’t you!’
Well, yes, I guess I do. Its hanging branches and friendly leaves can easily be seen as a metaphor for all things closed off from the world’s cynics yet sanctioned and nurtured in the bosom of nature.
Oh, but the willow tree is more than a metaphor for me and I suspect tens of thousands like me.
Those times I’d lay at the heart of a certain willow, make love with another man and feel nature’s blessing upon us will stay with me forever and help blot out all the ugliness and pain to which society once subjected me, just as some members of certain socio-cultural-religious groups and societies continue to inflict upon gay and transgender people world-wide. The willow weeps for them just as once it wept for me, but saw me through to better times just as, hopefully, it will see them also.
INITIATION
There is a bend in a river
where willows bow down low,
hid me and my first lover
oh, so many, many, years ago
I had never kissed a man,
was thrilled, yet frightened too,
found what only lovers can,
while, above, kingfishers flew
Under that old willow tree,
our lovemaking a waking dream,
acknowledged our sexuality
in the lines of a beautiful poem
Loudly, grasshoppers sang
as we faced, rose above our fears,
all birds and bees rejoicing,
weeping willow drying its tears
All my life since, I've known
Earth Mother is watching over me,
just as with your body then,
I shared the rhythm of its poetry
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2017
[Note: This poem has been revised since it first appeared in my collection, On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]
Well, yes, I guess I do. Its hanging branches and friendly leaves can easily be seen as a metaphor for all things closed off from the world’s cynics yet sanctioned and nurtured in the bosom of nature.
Oh, but the willow tree is more than a metaphor for me and I suspect tens of thousands like me.
Those times I’d lay at the heart of a certain willow, make love with another man and feel nature’s blessing upon us will stay with me forever and help blot out all the ugliness and pain to which society once subjected me, just as some members of certain socio-cultural-religious groups and societies continue to inflict upon gay and transgender people world-wide. The willow weeps for them just as once it wept for me, but saw me through to better times just as, hopefully, it will see them also.
INITIATION
There is a bend in a river
where willows bow down low,
hid me and my first lover
oh, so many, many, years ago
I had never kissed a man,
was thrilled, yet frightened too,
found what only lovers can,
while, above, kingfishers flew
Under that old willow tree,
our lovemaking a waking dream,
acknowledged our sexuality
in the lines of a beautiful poem
Loudly, grasshoppers sang
as we faced, rose above our fears,
all birds and bees rejoicing,
weeping willow drying its tears
All my life since, I've known
Earth Mother is watching over me,
just as with your body then,
I shared the rhythm of its poetry
Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2017
[Note: This poem has been revised since it first appeared in my collection, On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]
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