A Common Humanity, the Authorised Biography

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

Another new poem today, prompted by mind-body-spirit yesterday.

If any good can be said to come out of this awful COVID-19 it is that more of us have a sense of our all being in he same proverbial boat, regardless of any socio-cultural religious or, yes, sexual persuasion. Hopefully once the pandemic has passed, bigotry will have taken a bad fall if not disappeared altogether. Well, hope springs eternal ...

Across the world, people are struggling to cope various social restrictions, often at the same time as mourning loved ones who have passed away before their time. All due credit to humanity for its remarkable stoicism in the face of tough times.

A neighbour recently lost her mother. When I sympathised, she commented that "She is better off out of all this. I miss her terribly, of course, but her spirit will never leave me so I guess I just have to live with and be thankful for that." True, indeed. As I often try to reassure readers in my poems and blog preambles, love never dies.

Meanwhile, each in his and her own way, we can but continues to do battle with COVID-19 and trust that, when all's said and done, humanity is bigger than it, and will not only endure but survive whatever it throws at us.

A COMMON HUMANITY, THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY 

Yesterday, already past tense,

having left its mark on us some way

or another, more elements

of memory likely to find us engaging

with such varying shades

of light and dark, colour, absences

of colour, and encounters

with such black and white images as preferably

glossed over by way of face-savings

Today, a sense of making the best

of times, enduring the worst, ever urging

mind-body-spirit to reflect 

on kinder, happier climes, lend illusion

all the colours of a rainbow

making promises it may (or may not) keep,

self-appointed Guardian of Hope

in sickness and in health, half-awake and asleep,

feeding mind-body-spirit raison d'être

Tomorrow, left foraging for crumbs

of comfort or even enjoying a hearty meal

where the cap (or metaphor) fits,

feeding human arts, nature, and archives

conclusions that may (or may not)

be grounded in fact, fiction or a predilection

on the part of human nature

to enter into such mind games as engineered by Time,

and passed off as history or philosophy

Call me Past-Present-Future, providing the diversity

that puts the ‘u’ and ‘y’ in a common humanity

Copyright R N Taber, 2020

[Note: this poem also appears on my general poetry blog today as feedback suggests a significant number of its reader "see no reason" to access this one.