http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
This poem first appeared on my general poetry blog in November 2016; any readers interested can access its archives - listed on the right of any blog page - for the original post. Readers who follow both blogs have asked for a new poem. Well, I am working on one so please bear with me. I am very unwell at the moment and finding it hard to collect my thoughts. In the meantime, I hope the many readers that feedback suggests only read one or the other will enjoy the poem. (I am often asked why I post a poem on one blog and not the other or both, but even a blogger has to make choices; a poem is a poem is a poem, readers assure me, and I agree, yet relatively few readers visit both blogs ...)
We often overlook the simpler pleasures of life in our enthusiasm for the more exotic or whatever is most likely to impress family, peers and neighbours. A friend once commented, ‘We never know long we’ve got so all the more reason to cram in as much as we can while we can.’ I get that, but not everyone is a crammer; we all want different things from life and just because someone does not appear to have a lot to show for his or her life doesn’t mean they have not live it, in their own way and time, to the full.
Now, every so often, someone asks me why I often write about death. Well, as a positive thinker, I try to be as positive about the inevitability of death as I do about making the most of each day as it comes, no matter what it may bring. Besides, I have been living with prostate cancer for nearly six years now so shying away from death is not an option. Not that I have any intention of letting the Grim Reaper have his way with me just yet! (Better to be positive, surely?)
It has been suggested by those who do not know me very well that I should ‘find God’ and therefore need have no fear of death. They mean well, of course, but I have never been able to relate to any religion or idea of a personified ‘God’. Nor am I am an atheist, though, but more of an agnostic in as much as I do believe in a sense of spirituality that enhances our customised vision of the world; outwardly and inwardly. However, as regular readers well know, I take that sense of spirituality from nature, not religion. They will also be aware that I believe in a posthumous consciousness, the power of any human spirit to endure within the hearts and minds of anyone affected by it; a continuum, in fact, for as long as human beings walk the earth and affect the lives of others - to a greater or lesser extent - in everything we say and do.
Oh, and why, too, do I have a particular fondness for robins? Well, not least because they are survivors, known to see out the worst winters if only to sing in another spring, reminding us all that, of all nature’s gifts, hope has to be among the best on offer. (And should hope die in some bleak winter of the heart? Well, as spring follows winter so, too, perhaps might we…?)
Such is a sense of spirituality as I see it or if you prefer, the Landscape of Imagination from which so much of my poetry takes its inspiration, both mutually inclusive in my view; a landscape open of course to us all, pf course, whatever our ethnicity, gender or sexuality.
N-A-T-U-R-E, IMAGING ETERNITY AND TRANSCENDING KNOWN PARAMETERS
No one ever lays flowers,
comes even to rework old times,
but an old tree reads poems
that passes for a fitting eulogy,
and a robin sings
No memorial marks the spot,
none have cause to pause this way,
but shadows make a play
for life at Apollo’s pleasure,
and seeds grow
Each of four winds has a say
in how the tree needs must recite;
leafy branches acting out
rhythm, rhyme, blank verse,
(all weathers)
Mark how seasons play a part,
anticipating nature’s every mood,
overseeing a predilection
for happy-sad shades of green,
amber, red and mould
No let-up by day or night,
the tree passing on its every nuance
of sight and sound to each man,
woman and child with any feeling
for the natural world
Nature may well see us through
time’s ever-changing kaleidoscope,
yet humanity has far more say
than any leaves in what patterns
it may shape us…?
Ah, but such is human nature,
it may yet branch out on leafy whim
to make, break, let rise or fall
such passions of the human heart
as a robin sings
Roger N. Taber (2016)
This poem first appeared on my general poetry blog in November 2016; any readers interested can access its archives - listed on the right of any blog page - for the original post. Readers who follow both blogs have asked for a new poem. Well, I am working on one so please bear with me. I am very unwell at the moment and finding it hard to collect my thoughts. In the meantime, I hope the many readers that feedback suggests only read one or the other will enjoy the poem. (I am often asked why I post a poem on one blog and not the other or both, but even a blogger has to make choices; a poem is a poem is a poem, readers assure me, and I agree, yet relatively few readers visit both blogs ...)
We often overlook the simpler pleasures of life in our enthusiasm for the more exotic or whatever is most likely to impress family, peers and neighbours. A friend once commented, ‘We never know long we’ve got so all the more reason to cram in as much as we can while we can.’ I get that, but not everyone is a crammer; we all want different things from life and just because someone does not appear to have a lot to show for his or her life doesn’t mean they have not live it, in their own way and time, to the full.
Now, every so often, someone asks me why I often write about death. Well, as a positive thinker, I try to be as positive about the inevitability of death as I do about making the most of each day as it comes, no matter what it may bring. Besides, I have been living with prostate cancer for nearly six years now so shying away from death is not an option. Not that I have any intention of letting the Grim Reaper have his way with me just yet! (Better to be positive, surely?)
It has been suggested by those who do not know me very well that I should ‘find God’ and therefore need have no fear of death. They mean well, of course, but I have never been able to relate to any religion or idea of a personified ‘God’. Nor am I am an atheist, though, but more of an agnostic in as much as I do believe in a sense of spirituality that enhances our customised vision of the world; outwardly and inwardly. However, as regular readers well know, I take that sense of spirituality from nature, not religion. They will also be aware that I believe in a posthumous consciousness, the power of any human spirit to endure within the hearts and minds of anyone affected by it; a continuum, in fact, for as long as human beings walk the earth and affect the lives of others - to a greater or lesser extent - in everything we say and do.
Oh, and why, too, do I have a particular fondness for robins? Well, not least because they are survivors, known to see out the worst winters if only to sing in another spring, reminding us all that, of all nature’s gifts, hope has to be among the best on offer. (And should hope die in some bleak winter of the heart? Well, as spring follows winter so, too, perhaps might we…?)
Such is a sense of spirituality as I see it or if you prefer, the Landscape of Imagination from which so much of my poetry takes its inspiration, both mutually inclusive in my view; a landscape open of course to us all, pf course, whatever our ethnicity, gender or sexuality.
N-A-T-U-R-E, IMAGING ETERNITY AND TRANSCENDING KNOWN PARAMETERS
No one ever lays flowers,
comes even to rework old times,
but an old tree reads poems
that passes for a fitting eulogy,
and a robin sings
No memorial marks the spot,
none have cause to pause this way,
but shadows make a play
for life at Apollo’s pleasure,
and seeds grow
Each of four winds has a say
in how the tree needs must recite;
leafy branches acting out
rhythm, rhyme, blank verse,
(all weathers)
Mark how seasons play a part,
anticipating nature’s every mood,
overseeing a predilection
for happy-sad shades of green,
amber, red and mould
No let-up by day or night,
the tree passing on its every nuance
of sight and sound to each man,
woman and child with any feeling
for the natural world
Nature may well see us through
time’s ever-changing kaleidoscope,
yet humanity has far more say
than any leaves in what patterns
it may shape us…?
Ah, but such is human nature,
it may yet branch out on leafy whim
to make, break, let rise or fall
such passions of the human heart
as a robin sings
Roger N. Taber (2016)
