Pathways
By Roy Tabor
()
About this ebook
of love.
The humanity of life is constant – food-banks, war
and migrant families. This is the stuff of life through
which we pass, the loving, the living and the questions –
and birth and death is every-day.
“Life is a thought,an unbidden moment brought to time. My thoughts, my stumbling steps, The imprints of a journey, a walk across the shifting sands of time … footsteps marked in pathways yet to find across new landscapes of the mind”.
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Pathways - Roy Tabor
Pathways
Poems
by
Roy Tabor
Copyright
Copyright © Roy Tabor 2017
eBook Design by Rossendale Books:
www.rossendalebooks.co.uk
eBook ISBN: 978-1-326-97244-8
All rights reserved, Copyright under the Berne Copyright Convention and Pan American Convention. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedication
for Margaret,
‘Beyond all words.’
Poetry as speech
Poetry communicates in words and needs an audience.
The act of speaking words aloud increases sensibility
to their sound, their rhythm and meaning (Berry).
A poem expresses a personal thought or experience and
the rhythm of the words conveys the writer’s intention.
In these poems the arrangement of the text indicates how
the poem may be spoken. Voice, face and body movements can be combined to enhance interpretation. Repetition enables the underlying thoughts to emerge.
Share these thoughts aloud with a chosen friend (dogs make good listeners!).
Pathways
An empty bowl
When I was young with empty bowl
I ran and never spilled a drop
For there was nothing in my bowl to spill,
Those empty days with yet my mind to fill.
The little days of running had yet to find their cunning,
A race of moving feet without an end to meet.
When I was young I did not know how many pathways yet to go,
And I could wander through the woods
where trees were friends and brambles sweetened days;
In silent glade I sat upon the grass
Watching the sunlight’s shadows pass.
So filled my bowl with living things,
With butterflies and rabbits all with fairy wings.
When I was young, I found a book with paper pathways
and into imagination sped;
I sailed the oceans wide,
Climbed mountains where the eagles glide,
I saw great dragons coloured green
and travelled countries none had ever seen.
When I was old, I found another book
with pages of the human kind,
Faces with eyes and lips,
Stretching imagination through my mind.
I saw the poor man’s bowl – and the rich man speeding by –
I saw that blood was red,
Contorted face that peaceful smoothed when dead.
Within the compass of my new-found book
I found on every page the punctuating pictures,
Binding words, faces and hands, and warmth and laughter
(and sadness too, that sometimes followed after);
Now in my age, the pages blur – words dimly read
of yet more pathways still to tread.
The Kindled thought
Thoughts from another mind,
Within me dimly lit,
Cast shadows I can feel but not quite touch.
A feeble candle flickering in air,
Struggling to find some pathway there.
Too dim to see the earth,
Unsure to bring a new thought’s birth.
I tread with darkened feet,
A stumbling candle in a muffled mist,
Not hearing sounds I know are there,
I feel the darkness as I mind-less stare
Uncertain where I may find
The incandescence of that other mind.
So burns the kindling into flame,
And forward reach where others came.
Lost day
Gone is the day that is lost for ever,
Gone as the wind blown over the heather.
Gone into air like a trembling thought,
Emptied into a racing world,
Drained into whirlpool waters swirled.
Time is the measure, mapped in pain,
(such joy does not return again)
Segments of air that have passed away,
Breathless from life that did not stay.
Each moment idly tasted,
is tongued without intention
And time discarded like litter wasted.
Gone is the love that is lost,
Tears of today, circling away,
Dried water, lost,
and streams of living flow into never;
Gone is the life that is lost for ever.
Running with shadows
Sing with the sunshine,
Dream under stars,
Walk with the flowers,
Race with the dancing hours.
Time is the song of the passing day
struck to the bells in tune,
Calling the moments into life,
Echoing hours that will pass too soon.
Whistle with the wanderer
knocking wood to wood,
Chasing cats to fences,
Barking back to dogs,
Hooting at the pigtails,
Croaking face like frogs.
Run with the shadows down the street,
Jumping the stones that meet,
Penny for the sherbet,
Penny for the guy,
Sparkling sunbursts in my hands,
Circling meteor strands.
Time is the call of the darkening day,
Time is the call from play,
Time is the breath that cannot stay.
Belonging
I came
because I was pushed out of warm comfort
into noise and terror;
Is it all a mistake, an error
of some cosmic force?
Or a deliberate act of joy –
the making of a girl or boy?
Now I am here I will stay awhile,
listen to others shouting,
watch others stumbling.
It’s funny,
this thing called life,
It doesn’t last long,
hardly time for a speech or a song,
most things we do are not ‘right’
and much is considered just ‘wrong’.
It’s funny to think,
with so many people coming and going,
that anyone thinks they belong.
Beggars of belief