Tuning into Nature

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

A reader has asked why I often hyphenate several nouns to imply they are one; for example,  mind-body-spirit, past-present-future. It is because I see them as inseparable one from the other, a continuum in which we human beings are pivotal, for better, for worse ...

Someone else has contacted me with a very uplifting story which he suggests I may like to record as a poem. Well, always up for a challenge, me, and I hope you will enjoy the poem below. It appears this reader belongs to a culture that is not gay-friendly, to say the least. He came out to family and friends a few years ago when he met his first love. Sadly, many of the former rejected him for it. After a few years, the relationship ended, not least due to the reader's being estranged from most family members and friends. In recent years, though, he has found love again with another man. By now, it appears many who previously rejected him have come to terms with and are reconciled to his being gay.

The reader writes, “It is wonderful that my new partner and I can enjoy an almost normal life among those we love, although not everyone. We cannot pray as we would like, my partner and I, but prayer does not need four walls, neither does whatever divinity with whom we identify as God … Your poems are very clear on this, and we are grateful for your support even though you are not a religious person …” He goes on to ask  that “poem or no poem” I bring his story to the attention of readers on both blogs on the grounds that “ … too many people reject gays because they do not understand us and it is human nature to be wary of what we do not understand …” (So, true!)

So, here we go, with a poem I plan to post on my general blog tomorrow. I do post gay-interest poems there from time to time although feedback - and audience figures - suggests they are not well received by the majority of readers. Feedback also suggests that relatively few readers of this blog often dip into my general poetry blog, which I find very sad. After all  - as I have said before on the blogs, and probably will again -  a poem is a poem is a poem just as a person is a person is a person, regardless of gender or socio-cultural-religious persuasion.

“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.” ― Kahlil Gibrán, Sand and Foam

" Your head is a living forest full of songbirds." - e.e.Cummings

TUNING IN TO NATURE

Trying the door, but it slams

in my face as if to say I’ve no right

to enter here, where you are,

no matter if pulse and heartbeat set

on breaking the record

for breaking the time barrier

in the wink of an eye,

catching yours on a late tube train,

devil take the hindmost

Curtains at the window closed,

shutting me out, a cold wind siding

with you against me,

pulse racing, heart beating faster,

and faster, like competitors

in a race, running for running’s sake,

doesn’t matter where or why

nor that blue skies are poised to fall

at destination Endgame 

Shut out, yelling to be let in,

pulse and heartbeat at fever pitch,

a voice ringing in my ears,

telling me to ease up, enjoy the sun

on my face, wind in my hair,

embrace nature and human nature

just as we’d embrace each other

in a home we made with loving care,

meant to stay open all hours

Turning away, tears falling

like acid rain, somewhere a bird

trying to tell me I’ll love again,

not what I wanted or needed to hear,

after a gay love affair ended

and brought me low, but brought

here today, all the more 

happy-proud for having (eventually)

taken a songbird at its word

Copyright R. N. Taber 2019