Mystic River

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

What better time to recall a hot summer than in winter? I wrote this poem just after I graduated from university. I have revised it only slightly.

It was summer, 1973. Few people knew I was gay in those days and, to be honest, I still nursed random thoughts about ‘going straight’ in spite of the fact that I’d had sex with men since I was sixteen. Yes, homosexual relationships between ‘consenting adults’ had been legal in the UK since 1967 but an awful lot of people still had a problem with it….just like an awful lot of people still do.

There was another student I had fancied for a good two years but he always had a girl on his arm so I’d long since reconciled myself to the bitter-sweet martyrdom of unrequited love. I was sitting by the banks of the river Stour that runs through Canterbury when he came along and asked if he could join me. We had exchanged a few words but barely knew each other. Even so, I guess I was a familiar face and most of the students had already left. We chatted a while and later ended up in a local bar. I got tipsy (light-headed already, just spending time with him!) and blurted out the truth…that I fancied him like hell…then made a dash for the loo, a nervous (all of a sudden, dead sober) wreck.

He followed me, demanded to know if I was serious. I nodded miserably. He grabbed my arm and I thought, ‘This is it, he’ll rough me up good and proper.’ Instead, he kissed me gently on the lips and we spent the most of the next 48 hours in his room at the university…before going our separate ways.

We didn’t stay in touch. I moved around a lot in those days and will never know if he even tried to contact me again. Ah, but when I rediscovered the poem on a scrap piece of paper, faded to yellow and folded for a bookmark in a copy of Giovanni's Room, a fine novel by James Baldwin… those 48 hours fast forwarded a good 40 years...

MYSTIC RIVER 

We sat by the river,

a river that flows forever

into an endless sea

We talked by the river,

a river that flows forever

into prose and poetry

We played by the river,

a river that flows forever,

letting even art go free

All ages in the river,

a river that flows forever,

fish for someone’s tea

In love by the river,

a river that flows forever

into the heart of me

Copyright R. N. Taber 1973; rev.2009