For as
long as I can remember, Brighton on the East Sussex coast has always been a
gay-friendly place. Many years ago, I met someone there with whom I had a brief
fling that lasted all of one day. It was raining and we spent most of the time
in his hotel room. It was my first experience of sleeping in a four-poster bed.
In recent
years, I met up with an old friend who introduced me to someone with whom he
had been at school some 50 years ago…who turned out to be the same young man
(much older now, of course) I’d met that rainy day back in 1966. In those days,
of course, same sex relationships were still illegal in the UK.
Incredibly,
we recognized each other at once. Confiding some but not (quite) all to our
mutual friend, we seized an opportunity later to take a trip down Memory
Lane…in more ways than one.
True enough,
it is a fact of life that, more often than not (one way or another) what goes around comes around …eventually.
This poem
is a villanelle.
WHAT GOES
AROUND, COMES AROUND
What goes
around, comes around,
no
matter, gay or straight
as spring
seeds to wintry ground
Let time,
our mistakes, compound
(love
will always see us right?)
what goes
around, comes around
As dogs
of war run peace to ground,
see
humanity put to rout…
as spring
seeds to wintry ground
In all
nature, no finer, sweeter sound
than love
songs killing hate
what goes
around, comes around
Let
martyrdom, its myths compound
where
light and darkness mate
as spring
seeds to wintry ground
Where
sexuality dares speak its mind
(or
society construct a closet)
what goes
around, comes around
as spring
seeds to wintry ground
[Brighton, East Sussex, March 17th 2010]
Copyright
R. N. Taber 2010
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