Monday, 4 July 2016

Among Tales told by Seashells


Today’s short poem is deceptively simplistic; it was written in 2004 and was first published in my collection the following year. I say ‘deceptively’ because I had to reach deep within myself to work out why I was feeling so incredibly restless; at times dispirited, yet also optimistic, rather like someone clutching at straws in a deceptively calm sea, unable to find the strength to even try and swim… [How can I be sure it is how I felt? The poem reminds  me.] 

I suspect most of not all of us have a sense, at some time or another, of being tossed about on the eternal in-and-out, to-and-fro tides of time; it can be very wearisome, to say the least.

Well, all I can say is if we are but flotsam and jetsam in the Sea of Life, may it be along the ever gay-friendly shores of love…

Okay, it wasn't the love affair of the century, but we were together long enough to remind us both there life, love (and sex) for the over 60's, and how LGBT history, too, has a delightful habit of repeating itself...at any age...if we let it.

AMONG TALES TOLD BY SEASHELLS

Love hadn’t touched me
for many years;
I had let myself drift freely
on a blue sea of tears

I chanced to find peace
(or did it find me?)
searching for the likes of us 
on that same blue sea

Gone, tears of loneliness 
blue, only the sky;
body (left all but spiritless)
a light in the mind's eye

Ashore at last, for homing in
on the heart's outline

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005

[From: A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005; revised ed, in e-format in preparation.]


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