Human Spirit, very much Alive and Kicking

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

Today's poem first appeared on the blog in 2017.

A winter of the heart such as the Covid-19 coronavirus is bringing to so many people worldwide can be an especially desolate time of year for singles of any age, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Ah, but if we promise ourselves another spring and do our best to keep that promise, well, who knows…? 

Luck is a fine thing, can strike anyone anywhere at any time BUT we have to be in the right frame of mind to recognise it or it will more than likely pass us by.

The world will not come to us, we have to go out and find it. Yes, there are a lot of mean, nasty people out there BUT there are also a LOT of good, kind people too.

From time to time, we all experience a winter of the heart. Yes, even in midsummer. Yet, we can make the journey back to its spring, especially with encouragement, if not active help, from family and friends. 

Alone, lonely? No help, no encouragement, no one seeming to give a damn? Time, indeed, to tap into the human spirit and set it to work for us as I attempted, with no small degree of success, one bleak December some years ago...

HUMAN SPIRIT, VERY MUCH ALIVE AND KICKING 

Long ago, one bleak winter
a frosty spirit did moan,
heart barely even beating,
no life to call its own,
no one it could confide in,
regarding having (finally) come
to make sense of me 

A lonely Christmas over
New Year out of sight,
asking the point of living
when there is no light,
where no angels dare tread
for fear their ‘never-ending’ story
may well end there 

I heard a voice in my ear
trying to reassure me,
so dropped by a gay bar
and grabbed a chair,
found myself confiding
to a man in grey how I’d only just
faced up to being gay 

Chat became confession,
and once I had begun,
a heavy load grew lighter,
my tunnel all but run;
then my turn to listen how
he’d come out to the world to stay,
no longer afraid to be gay 

We drank beers till closing,
and agreed to meet again,
once strangers, now friends,
and though a snowfall heavy,
I happily made my way,
mind-body-spirit alive and kicking,
on this, its first rebirth day 

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; rev. 2020 

[Note: An earlier version of this poem first appeared in On the Battlefields of Love; by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010 under the title, 'A Feeling for Midwinter.']