G-A-Y In The Subject Field

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

Yes, this is the poem from which the blog takes its title. It hasn’t been on the blog for a couple of years now and ‘Malika’ has asked me to post it today as she and her partner share my passion for clouds. I love to hear from lesbians as it reassures me that it is not only gay men that dip into the blog. I appreciate that some lesbians prefer the term to gay, but I know many more that are happy with gay.

Feedback suggests that some transgender readers enjoy the blog too, and that’s great news. After all, we are all people in the same swim, often against this or that society’s tides and that’s what counts. If we do not continue to press for equal right around the world, those countries where gay and transgender people are still victimised, ostracised, even executed with less dignity that you would put down a sick animal ... nothing will change. for my own part, I feel very heartened that so many straight young people from all walks of life take the trouble to email me and express encouraging sentiments about both this as well as my general blog. One reader even said he and his girlfriend both enjoyed reading the gay novels serialised in my fiction blog.

Change always takes time, changes in certain socio-cultural-religious attitudes invariably longer, often (far) longer than we would like. In our young people, though, I see more good than bad; in them especially lie the hopes and aspirations of  yours truly and other men and women, boys and girls around the world weary of being made to feel they need to apologise for their sexuality or, worse still, live out their lives in some awful closet.

G-A-Y IN THE SUBJECT FIELD

I read it in the clouds one day

when I was feeling lonely,

‘G-A-Y is good, means gay.’

I hadn’t found the way to say

how I felt about sexuality;

I read it in the clouds one day

Alone on life’s great highway,

till passing clouds told me,

‘G-A-Y is good, means gay.’

I couldn’t help feeling the way

I felt about you and me;

I read it in the clouds one day

So much I wanted to say

and did eventually…

‘G-A-Y is good, means gay.’

Life is rarely roses all the way,

though nature set us free;

I read it the clouds one day,

‘G-A-Y is good, means gay.’

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