http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
I wrote this poem in 2003; it is based on another I wrote when I was just thirteen years-old and growing up in my home town of Gillingham in Kent. In those far-off days, the view from my bedroom window was much as the poem describes. I was born in that same house and the bedroom remained mine until the family moved across the river shortly after my 14th birthday.
Our red (Irish) setter was called Barney and next-door’s cat was named Jakesey. Barney was 14 years-old when he got ill and had to be put down. Jakesey had long since been found dead one morning (at a good if uncertain age) under the hydrangea bush, his favourite place.
At the time I came across the original poem, I was already an adult and had not lived in Gillingham for many years. The poem took me back to my old bedroom, and it was a comfort as I was missing a boyfriend with whom I had enjoyed a passionate fling before his return to Australia only a few days earlier. [After a relationship with someone that lasted only a few years before he was killed in a road accident, I was destined to have to settle for occasional flings…]
I loved that room. It was my bolt-hole, a refuge from family, school and other problems with which I hadn't a clue how to cope. Nothing was ever the same after we moved away and life would get a whole lot worse for a teenage Roger Taber (not least for struggling to express a sexuality that was considered criminal then) before they began to get any better. Ah, but that’s another story…part of which you may well read between the lines in another poem...
VIEW FROM A BEDROOM WINDOW or ON SEEKING INSPIRATION AND A VOICE
Stone yard below,
honeysuckle crowding
a trellis gate
Red setter on the alert
to make a break for it, see
the world
Next-door’s cat
yawning, teasingly,
on a fence...
leaning, precariously
over a flowering hydrangea,
but in no danger
from a dog’s
merely quivering
snout
Reflections of a bed
left unmade, where I sleep
without you...
dancing with daisies
on a lawn untouched since
you’ve been gone,
left me alone
with a dog, next door’s cat
and…what?
Shopping, cleaning,
washing-up, contemplating
irons in the fire
Dog ears pricking,
killing time till it sides with
the heart’s desire
Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2012
[Note: I have changed the appearance of this poem on the page and slightly revised the last stanza from the original version as it appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]
I wrote this poem in 2003; it is based on another I wrote when I was just thirteen years-old and growing up in my home town of Gillingham in Kent. In those far-off days, the view from my bedroom window was much as the poem describes. I was born in that same house and the bedroom remained mine until the family moved across the river shortly after my 14th birthday.
Our red (Irish) setter was called Barney and next-door’s cat was named Jakesey. Barney was 14 years-old when he got ill and had to be put down. Jakesey had long since been found dead one morning (at a good if uncertain age) under the hydrangea bush, his favourite place.
At the time I came across the original poem, I was already an adult and had not lived in Gillingham for many years. The poem took me back to my old bedroom, and it was a comfort as I was missing a boyfriend with whom I had enjoyed a passionate fling before his return to Australia only a few days earlier. [After a relationship with someone that lasted only a few years before he was killed in a road accident, I was destined to have to settle for occasional flings…]
I loved that room. It was my bolt-hole, a refuge from family, school and other problems with which I hadn't a clue how to cope. Nothing was ever the same after we moved away and life would get a whole lot worse for a teenage Roger Taber (not least for struggling to express a sexuality that was considered criminal then) before they began to get any better. Ah, but that’s another story…part of which you may well read between the lines in another poem...
VIEW FROM A BEDROOM WINDOW or ON SEEKING INSPIRATION AND A VOICE
Stone yard below,
honeysuckle crowding
a trellis gate
Red setter on the alert
to make a break for it, see
the world
Next-door’s cat
yawning, teasingly,
on a fence...
leaning, precariously
over a flowering hydrangea,
but in no danger
from a dog’s
merely quivering
snout
Reflections of a bed
left unmade, where I sleep
without you...
dancing with daisies
on a lawn untouched since
you’ve been gone,
left me alone
with a dog, next door’s cat
and…what?
Shopping, cleaning,
washing-up, contemplating
irons in the fire
Dog ears pricking,
killing time till it sides with
the heart’s desire
Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2012
[Note: I have changed the appearance of this poem on the page and slightly revised the last stanza from the original version as it appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]
No comments:
Post a Comment