A Little Life Music

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

Music gives a soul to he universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” - Plato

Music acts like a magic key. To which the most tightly closed hearts open.” – Maria von Trapp

“The only thing better than singing is more singing.” – Ella Fitzgerald

Now, why you may well ask, am I writing up a poem-post about the joy of music when I can’t play an instrument, sing a note and have lived with a significant degree of deafness all my life? 

Good question, that. The short answer is that am always listening to favourite music and songs playing in my head; especially when I am feeling sad, lonely or scared enough for self-pity to take me to the very edge of The Abyss. Music reminds me why I shouldn’t jump. Oh, I’ve been pushed many a time, and fallen. But, who hasn’t, by giant shadows that mean us ill?  

Yet, even while falling, I’d hear sounds of music in my head returning me to terra-firma, if only to start living, learning and listening all over again…

A LITTLE LIFE MUSIC

My cap hides less hair than it did,
as well as mixed feelings, running riot
from time to time
when not invoking a passion for any music,
poetry or rhyme sure to give
savage breast and unquiet mind a welcome rest
from trying to reason after-shocks
of pleasure-pain imposed by its own and the world’s
least concealed flaws

Music, may well be the food of love,
left to play on even in the face of rejection,
human nature least inclined
to see a willow for its branches, falling
like tears for times hearts
all but broken by attributing such meaning
to feelings within as first
lit its fires, fanned its flames, only to have it all but die
without understanding why 

Mind-body-spirit thrives to the sound
of music, no matter how its life forces presented,
by humankind or Earth Mother,
amateur or professional, a confessional
of sorts where heart-and soul
may well fear to go, dreading what it may uncover
in such recesses as it may yet nurture,
while struggling to keep all but hidden even from itself;
mixed feelings on a lonely shelf

Yet, even the saddest heart-and-soul can
learn to sing again, to a little life music composed
in kinder times by friendly ghosts,
now lending it huff and puff enough to revive
half-forgotten dreams,
leading us, in turn, to doors closed to us far too long,
pleading we fling them open, let music
back in, in time to see the willow weep such tears of light,
as no darkness can ever snuff out

Though insight deflected by brilliant sunshine or heavy rain,
trust a little life music to see its way clear again…

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2022

L-I-F-E, Windows on the World OR Homing in on Sense and Sensibility

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

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

A single friend once commented that his everlasting regret in life is never to have been in love, loved in return, and having children. This, from someone whose family adore him and who will be remembered by many for a kind heart and generosity of spirit.

Few if any of us can say, hand on heart, that we have no regrets. Life, though, deals each and every one of us a different hand, not least because we are all different. Such is the nature of things. 

Whatever mistakes or poor/ wrong choices we may have made in life, love comes in all shapes and sizes, and we should regret none of it, even where it may not have (quite) come up to our hopes and expectations. Love is a life force from which we should all take heart. We may be single, or fortunate enough to have found a partner (within or outside marriage)…whatever, I defy anyone to say they have never loved at all…whether it be of the human or natural world…past or present, nevertheless continuing to make itself felt always, and hopefully making us better, kinder people for its place in our lives.

As for whatever we may leave behind us  when time demands we take our leave of this life, we could all do a lot worse than have secured a good place in someone else’s memory, the effects of which may well be passed on for generations.Regular readers will know that I often refer to a posthumous consciousness, that part of us that remains 'live' in someone else's mind-body-spirit, the better, kinder part of us continuing to make itself felt; a sense of eternity if, only as ghosts.

As a someone once said to me many years ago, "To achieve at least one good thing in life for someone else, is raison d'être enough to compensate for if not (quite) wipe out any of those bad choices with which we are inclined to engage from time to time." He was a vicar, and well aware that I did not subscribe to any religion. (My Pantheism came years later.)

L-I-F-E, WINDOWS ON THE WORLD or HOMING IN ON SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

Watching a sunrise,

all live senses re-awakening

to the spirit of nature,

metaphor for balmy breezes

encouraging evergreens

to sing a song for all seasons,

birds winging Nature’s

semaphore of hope, no matter

blue skies turning grey

Watching high noon

play out its daily theatricals,

all we passionate

children of the Earth eagerly

aspiring to make

the most of opportunities lost,

missed (or never were)

before Time has its wicked way

with us, and it’s too late

Watching a sunset,

curtain all but drawn on affairs

of mind, body, spirit…

working in a harmony (of sorts)

to contrive meaning,

purpose, (closure?) whatever

it takes for laurels

upon which we may rest easier

if not (quite) in peace

Watching a darkness

gather our world to its bosom

where we may well

writhe like newborns lacking

in communication skills

to express our needs, desires,

all found wanting…

yet a sixth sense of its potential

but waiting in wings

Watching at windows

on the world from the top floor

of a tower block,

pulling blinds to try and forget

those cares of the day

(ever ready to keep us company)

by taking from love

(in real time, memory or fiction)

a renewed life force

Copyright R. N. Taber 2017, 2020

Insight, the Twinkle in Time's Eye

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Rarely are our thoughts processed more intensely and tested than as we ponder questions about life and death, especially the latter if only because it represents The Great Unknown and we human beings prefer to know (for sure) what we are up against. Throughout our lives, we have at least the semblance of some control, but over the time and nature of our death we have little or none. More disturbing still, what happens once we are cut free of a life that so loves to play us like puppets on a string and go into free fall? Something or nothing…?

Those who subscribe to a religion think they have the answer while those of us who don’t take hope from nature’s cycle of renewal.

Whatever, thinking about such things, homing on any conclusions (however arbitrary) we may reach and acting on them, is probably as good a preparation for life and death as we can aspire. 

There is much to be said for the old adage, look before you leap, but it has to be said that the looking eye does not always see; it is the inner eye, as prompted by searching thought, that is more likely to home in (or not) on not only what is it looking at but also looking for.

Looking, finding, reworking, making reparation, whatever ...  life, art and science owe much to its wannabes and wanna-knows. As for what anyone really thinks about all they see and hear, few will ever get to know unless they have access to his or her personal space.

INSIGHT, THE TWINKLE IN TIME'S EYE

Squatting on a patch of waste land,
imaging the growing emptiness
of wishful thinking feeding streams
of consciousness running through
alleys, backyards and housing estates,
watching the living and the dead
vying for time's favours in diaries
and poems they were always meaning
to write

Addressing the insubstantial nature

of shadows, inner sight focusing

on the human spirit playing host to body

no more or less than the flow of blood

feeding its veins as myth's muddy waters

close in, re-assessing attitudes scrawled

in everyday graffiti or glued to pasteboard

points of view; scientific, religious…

(does it really matter?) ever attempting

to win us over by fair means or foul

since that first day at school, now exposed

for the saddest, cruellest trick of all

Articulating on life as mind-body-spirit 

preparing mind and body to chance

a coming of age, despite envious gods

and their petty tyrannies if upstaged

by human selfishness, stuff of immaturity
feeding an ego-led imagination
(Oh, and whatever happened to that?)
and leading us astray who so love to think
we know it all

Focusing on and interpreting the purpose

of one starry eye watching out for us

who are frantically rummaging mortality,

for a kinder fate (surely?) than to be left

drifting in full view of old gods gathered

to gloat, our humanity come less than right

for running the gamut of human history

posed by selective readings between lines

of cautionary tales told by one, Jonah,

from the belly of a whale last seen spouting

gobbledegook to hunters well up for the chase

no more or less than for its own sake

Mind-body-spirit, cultivating the wry twinkle

of all-seeing eye

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010; 2016

[Note: This poem has been revised from an earlier version that appears under the title ‘Death Star’ in On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber 2010.]

Blur

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While waiting for a cataract operation on my right eye, I began to consider a deeper significance of the blur in front of me everywhere I went. [I am pleased to report that the procedure went well on March 1st and I can already see better although my vision in that eye remains a little watery.)

Now, why write a poem instead of an essay or a novel? Why paint a picture rather than create a sculpture? Why compose a symphony and not a ballad?  Could it be that the inner eye strives to focus on what can never quite come into focus because it does not exist, but remains a haunting presence needing to find ways to make itself felt if not known…?

BLUR

Everything is a blur;
I can scarcely see the way ahead...
Yet, I have only to look up
to spot friendly faces in clouds,
hanging from Earth’s ancient rafters
like celebration bunting

Everything is a blur;
I can scarcely see the way ahead...
Yet, I have only to look down
to spot familiar tracks in wet grass
leading to places I love whose smell
fills me with spring

Everything is a blur;
I am left peering into a misty rain...
Yet, I have only to let birdsong
into mind-body-spirit to negotiate
safe passage with nature’s finer forces
to Mount Parnassus

Senses, conscience, reasoning…
Blur is everything

Copyright R. N. Taber 2013