Evergreen OR G-A-Y, Classic Portraits

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

One of my favourite novels is Maurice by E. M. Forester, not just because I am gay but because Forster is not only a great writer in the sense that he not only embraces homosexuality as no less as important feature of life than its heterosexual counterpart, but invites all readers to do the same.

Years ago, I was friendly with a married couple with whom I shared more than a few drinks one evening, in the course of which I blurted out that I am gay, and were they OK with that? The husband laughed and said, "We'd worked that one out, Roger. Besides we've both read E. M. Forster's Maurice. The wife added, "and loved it." Both asked simultaneously, "Does that answer your question?" It did, of course ...

Humankind has always taken its cue from nature and sexuality is all part of the same equation. It is, after all, on record that there are gay couples in the animal world. So the next time someone tries to tell you that being gay is ‘unnatural’ tell them we are as much part of nature’s scheme of things as they are. Complex, the scheme may be, but we gay men and women are no less a part of it than our heterosexual brothers and sisters; as I have said previously on the blogs, our differences don't make us different, only human, with as much to offer a world playing host to a common humanity as they. 

I have held this view for many years. A gay-unfriendly cleric once retorted that my logic is flawed since it is God, not nature, in whose grand scheme of things we rise or fall.

‘Isn’t your take on nature that it was created by God?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he snapped.

‘And doesn’t that include human nature?’

‘Of course,’ he snapped again.

‘So if your God has no problem with sexuality, why should you?’

‘Trust a gay man to resort to a trick question like that,’ he snapped yet again, and walked away.

I rest my

EVERGREEN OR G-A-Y, CLASSIC PORTRAITS 

Your naked body, an open invitation

to sample the fruits of anticipation;

teasing the tongue, bending the ear

like a song half sung by grasshoppers

poised at evening dew to spring lightly

into eternity, let wings of memory

take us to heaven, lower us down

on finest silk of emerald sheen, richer

for all we’ve tasted, heard, seen

Evergreen

Your pouting lips, an open invitation

to sample the fruits of anticipation;

teasing the tongue, bending the ear

like raindrops dripping on leaves,

(a sound like guitars at crescendo)

loath to let us go separate ways,

now but gently falling, tucking us in,

scented sheets of emerald sheen, richer

for all we’ve tasted, heard, seen

Evergreen

Our quiet bodies, proven expectation,

ripened fruits of anticipation;

teasing the tongue, bending the ear,

the sweetest silence that nature

ever brought to bear, hint of a breeze

on wings of summer folding down

until grasshoppers at dawn,

earthy silks of emerald sheen, richer

for all we’ve tasted, heard, seen

Evergreen

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2011

[Note: This poem has been slightly revised since it appeared in 1st eds. of The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; (revised) e-edition in preparation. NB.  Any new collections and revised editions of my collections will (eventually) appear as e-books...unless any poetry (print) publishers ot there show an interest.]