Sealed with a Kiss

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

Love does not discriminate, can be found in all walks of life and means different things to different people.  

Just as people may well change as time passes, so too may the love that binds them; it will either accept and adapt to any changes, or not. In the latter case, it does not entirely deaden the spirit of that love which first brought lovers together, but lets it pass into a dreamless sleep from which there is no waking, leaving both parties free to find love again if they can and so choose. I once knew a woman who married for a second time late in life; it was his second marriage too. Each loved both partners dearly. “They were both very different,” she once told me, “...but so was I, that second time, and love fitted us like a glove, just as it had for each of us the first time around...”

A loneliness of the heart can be filled in many ways, not least by finding that special someone who can help fulfil our needs, share our passions and generally be looking for much the same in a life companion as we are ourselves. That’s as near as I can get to defining ‘true’ love’ while not to say its various imitations are any the less meaningful or honest at any given moment in time.

Two people can enjoy sex with each other, for example, without wanting the kind of commitment that being ‘in love’ involves sooner or later. ‘Casual’ sex is a misnomer; there is nothing casual about two adults agreeing to sex simply because a mutual attraction also satisfies a deep-seated need, whether or not those needs are quite the same.

A reader asks if I have anyone in mind when I write love poems. Yes, I do, but only for having felt the power in all its shapes and forms, though having been ‘in love’ for only a short time. My potential partner was killed in a car accident long ago, before we’d had time to come out of our respective closets and tell friends and family we were in a relationship. I never met anyone again who saw me as a potential life partner.  Even so, as I deal with living alone on a physical level, I am never alone on an emotional one.

Loved-ones, living or passed away, whether family, friends or lovers... they never die, but pass into our consciousness and will continue loving and supporting us if we let them. Yes, it is a sentiment at which some may well scoff, but it works for me and can work for them too if they will only give it a go...

SEALED WITH A KISS

We met at a dance,
soon got into romancing
under a moon as misty
as a priest’s glass eye,
voices in the wind making us
laugh, making us cry

We wished on stars,
felt the world cease to turn,
pause, as if eager
to share our first kiss,
voices in the wind sighing
“Yes, yes, yes...”

So began, a fairy tale
that would see us hitching
rides across landscapes
of such joy and tears
as any lifetime sure to bring
true lovers

That first kiss, a blessing
as of Earth Mother
to Her children, lending us
a spirituality
to rise above the many failings
of Society

Through thick and thin,
up against walls
or dancing other nights away
wherever we may be,
we bonded with that very first kiss
into eternity

Come other nights, dawns,
wherever life chanced
to take us, be we awake or asleep
together or apart
a life force would always sustain us,
,our shared heart

If all good things must end,
memory grow dim
and time wing its way to eternity,
be sure of this;
true love lives on forever, once sealed
with a kiss

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022

[Note: This poem is loosely based on an earlier poem that appears under the title ‘Hold the Dream’ in my collection First Person Plural, Assembly Books, 2002.; this post-poem also appears on my general poetry blog today.] RT

Engaging with Epic Poetry

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

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

In July 2009 I was privileged to participate in "One and Other", sculptor Sir Antony Gormley's 'live sculpture' project on the 4th plinth in London's Trafalgar Square; I gave a poetry reading. At the time, I thought reference to its being a 'live' sculpture simply referred to those participants invited to do whatever for an hour, July- October. I became aware that I was part of an epic poem of sorts, which subsequently inspired the poem.

Now, text-speak may well be as relatively a new phenomenon as the mobile phone itself, but conversations with the inner self are as old as humankind.

Invariably, we think of mind, body and spirit at separate entities, and I am often criticised for suggesting they are. Yet, each engage with each other in such a way that maybe it is high time we started thinking of the whole rather than the parts? After all, it is they that would see us (as a whole) engage with time and space... for better, for worse; it is they, also, to, whom we invariably turn when we are stressed out for whatever reason.

Exercising mind and body is a form of creative therapy that can encourage the human spirit to wake up to whatever reality we are avoiding and help us reach a constructive decision as to how best to proceed - or not, as the case may be.

Poets make much of Poetry of the Heart, but there is a  sense in which we are all, each and every one of us, living poems; the whole of us, as individuals, not just this part or that. 

There are many who profess to hate poetry, find it glib, trite, weak; those same people, simply by engaging with life itself, who are creating the Poetry of History, an epic poem about the human race as beautiful - not least for its very diversity - as any prose.

ENGAGING WITH EPIC POETRY

Life,

spiralling me downwards

from cradle to grave…

often when I least expect it,

leaves me clinging

for dear life at straws in an ill wind

raised by a helter-skelter

of events conspiring to drag me

beyond imagination,

test ego (and salvation) to limits

rarely conceived

even by those daily enduring

a world of nightmares

Love,

spelling out such promises

as sweet dreams

are made of, offering (for free)

a magical-mystery-tour

of mind-body-spirit asking only

that I stay true

to the end of a line drawn

not (whimsically) 

in sand or clay, but in good faith

that 1 + 1 is equal,

to the sum of all its frictions,

and I can add up

Hope,

bringing me the best of things

at the worst of time

reshaping even the obstinate clay

of human nature

as a potter’s wheel might

its tasks in hand,

demanding the poetry of art

speak up for Beauty,

fair chameleon exposing masks

of the Beast

for human waste washed up

by the tides of life

Centuries of anticipating eternity 

for engaging with its epic poetry

Copyright R. N. Taber 2017

[Note: This poem also appears on my general poetry blog today.]