T Ralph Taylor

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Poems

Waterfalls of Hopelessness

Tears are the waterfalls of hopelessness,
carving canyons down a weary face.
To feel hopeless is the lowest place,
a shadowed valley where the soul resides,
where even breath feels borrowed, heavy, laced
with the ache of endless night.
Looking to the next day is often hard,
a steep and trembling climb.
Gazing further still reveals the abyss,
a void that swallows hope and time.
Lifting the head, chasing pride,
it drains the spirit, bone-deep tired,
as if the weight of unseen chains
pulls every effort back to earth.
Yet in this dark, a quiet truth remains:
we must hold on, though fingers bleed and fray,
to the promise of light at the tunnel’s end.
For light restores the sight we lost,
reveals the path beyond the falls,
turns raging waters into gentle streams,
and lifts the heart that once knew only pain.
The waterfalls may roar, the tunnel stretch,
but light remembers how to break through stone.
Even here, in hopelessness’s hold,
a fragile dawn is waiting to be known.

T Ralph Taylor
Author
Waterfalls of Hoplessness

The Light of Honest Ground

The Light of Honest Ground In open fields where no closets hide,
Honesty walks with nothing to disguise,
No sheepskin cloak to veil the wolf inside,
No whispered lies behind a painted smile.
It cuts like winter wind across the skin,
A blade that turns upon the self alone.
To face the mirror’s unrelenting grin,
To claim the flaws, we would rather not have known,
This is the terrible and sacred price,
The pain that purges, burns, and makes us whole.
Yet when the truth is spoken, clean and bare,
And others meet us with an equal gaze,
No skeletons rattle in the empty air,
No guarded tension clouds the open days.
A quiet settles, deep and bright and free,
Like dawn on water, still and unafraid.
For honesty is not the end of peace,
It is the door through which true peace is made.

T Ralph Taylor
Author

Abstract Echoes

A splash, a streak, a riot of hue,
they call it child’s play,
a kindergarten scribble hung in gold frames.
Yet the canvas stares back, unblinking,
and something inside the chest
tightens or loosens
without permission.
It is never that simple.
Beneath the surface chaos
a quiet blade turns:
colour speaking in tongues
no dictionary owns.
Crimson whispers rage,
ultramarine calms the lungs,
ochre remembers old earth and forgotten suns.
The painting does not ask to be liked,
only felt.
It stirs the inner being,
that sleeping animal curled behind the ribs,
and sets it pacing.
No clear story, no gentle caption,
only a question thrown into the well of you.
You answer in silence,
or in sudden words that surprise even yourself.
The dialogue begins
between stranger and stranger:
the artist who is absent,
and the viewer who is suddenly naked.
Attach language and the danger grows.
A title can cage the wild thing,
a paragraph can clip its wings.
Better sometimes to let it roar
or weep
wordless.
For some it sings,
a low, vibrating chord
that hums in the marrow long after leaving the room.
For others it remains mute,
a decorated wall,
polite and empty.
Both responses are true.
The art does not fail;
it simply meets the soul
that arrives before it.
Abstract, they name it,
yet nothing is more concrete:
emotion stripped of alibi,
form freed from duty,
colour given permission
to tell the truth
we spend our lives
learning not to say.

T Ralph Taylor
Author

A Poem of Kindness Unbound

In the sunlit streets of France, where words can falter and fade,
A child stepped sudden into fate’s swift, careless blade.
No time for doubt, no room for blame, just instinct’s urgent call.
I slammed the brakes, the bike stopped dead, and gravity claimed all.
Thrown to earth in a scatter of pain, six wounds tore flesh and pride,
Blood flowed free on foreign stone, yet strangers stood beside.
Locals lifted, locals carried, explained my tale with care,
To a modest pharmacy door where mercy waited there.
The pharmacist, and colleagues, with steady hands, though chaos stained his floor,
Bandaged deep the crimson flow and summoned help once more.
The Pompiers came, the hospital hummed with nurses swift and kind,
Redressing wounds with gentle skill, easing body, quieting mind.
A doctor’s eyes, a fresh prescription, clean dressings through the day.
Then daily visits to my van, a motorhome bathed in healing light.
Beyond the call, beyond the expected, they gave without reserve,
A tapestry of open hearts where none would dare to swerve.
From many nations, many faiths, or none at all—they came,
No barrier of tongue or creed could dim compassion’s flame.
They saw not stranger, not “the other,” but simply one in need,
And answered with humanity that plants the finest seed.
How small our guarded minds appear when measured by such grace.
Walls of suspicion crumble fast in kindness’ warm embrace.
In every helping hand that day, equality stood tall:
We are but travellers, one and all, beneath the same sky’s call.
My thanks rise deep as any wound, yet lighter than the air.
To locals, pharmacist, and nurses, to every soul who cared.
The people from the campsite who went beyond the call.
You stitched not only flesh and bone, but faith in humankind,
A living poem of unity that gentle hearts still bind.
May we all learn to open wide, to give as we received,
For in the face of any storm, it is care that sets us free.

T Ralph Taylor
Author

I am becoming

In the hush of early days, a boy replied,
“I want to be a statue,”
carved in stone, unmoving,
famous beneath the sky’s wide eye.
Yet life refused the pedestal
and set him loose instead.
No certificates to frame his name,
he swung the cleaver, learned the blade,
apprentice butcher carving days
until the master’s title came,
then laid the knives down, walked away,
still becoming.
On Iona’s wind-scoured stones
he hauled the abbey back to light,
by night he read beneath the lamps,
dreaming student, youth to guide.
But currents shifted with the tide,
university called, and ministry.
Four years of ink, prayer, and fire,
three churches bloomed beneath his hand,
chaplain’s quiet, steady hours,
until the calling gently thinned.
He turned once more, returned to school,
became the teacher, loved it true,
China’s dragon roads unfurled
on trips where young eyes learned the world.
Retirement wrapped him like a shawl,
pensioner beneath the years,
yet in the quiet he recalled
an older, softer, youthful call.
Tao flowed through open palms,
mindfulness like morning calm,
and poems rose where once was prose,
three books born, and still they grow.
Statue, butcher, builder, priest,
teacher, pilgrim, man of peace,
none the final shape he wore,
each a garment, each outgrown.
He has always been the river,
never the stone.
So here I stand, still incomplete,
a sentence written, incomplete,
each chapter folds, another starts,
the journey is the work of art.
I am not what I have been;
I am Becoming.

T Ralph Taylor
Author

What is love?

What Is Love?
What is love?
Is it the sudden stirring
when another enters our sight,
a glance that lingers
a heartbeat longer than it should,
the body awakening
before the mind has found a word?
Is that love?
Or simply desire
wearing the beautiful clothes
we have given it?
For lust can burn brightly,
and for a while
we may mistake the flame
for something that will last.
Yet love seems quieter.
Perhaps it begins
not in the wanting of another,
but in the wondering
how they are
when we are not there.
Perhaps it is found
in the small unnoticed things,
the hand upon a shoulder,
the listening without interruption,
the staying when leaving
would be easier.
But then what of family?
Is the love of a parent
the same love we seek
in another’s arms?
We care,
we protect,
we forgive,
we worry when they hurt,
and sometimes we hurt
because they hurt.
Is that love
or another face of it?
And friendship,
what name do we give
to the friend whose presence
makes the world feel less lonely?
There may be no desire
to possess them,
no hunger of the body,
yet something deep within us
is touched by their existence.
Could that too be love?
And what of two people
who share the same sex?
Can the heart
recognise such a difference?
Does love ask
what body stands before us,
or does it simply recognise
another human being
in whom we have found
something precious?
Perhaps the heart
has never been very good
at obeying the boundaries
the mind creates.
We give love names,
romantic, parental,
friendship, devotion,
compassion, desire,
as though dividing the ocean
could tell us
which part is water.
Perhaps love is not one thing.
Perhaps it is a spectrum
of human connection,
sometimes physical,
sometimes emotional,
sometimes almost impossible
to explain.
And perhaps the deepest love
is not found in the wanting
but in the giving.
Not,
What can you give me?
but,
What can I give you
without asking anything in return?
For love that demands possession
may become a cage.
Love that allows another
to remain themselves
may become freedom.
And somewhere between
desire and tenderness,
between longing and letting go,
between the body
and the quiet places of the heart,
we search for an answer.
What is love?
Perhaps it is the moment
another person’s happiness
begins to matter to us
as much as our own.
Perhaps it is the courage
to see another completely,
their beauty,
their brokenness,
their fears,
their contradictions,
and still choose
to care.
Or perhaps there is no definitive answer.
Perhaps love is one of those mysteries
we spend a lifetime approaching,
like the horizon,
always before us,
never quite reached,
yet somehow
giving direction
to the journey.

T Ralph Taylor
Author

Commission a Poem Written For an Event or Special Ocassion.

Ralph has written poems for  the funerals of friends, for the marriage of two people. He has also written poems for the memorial of loved ones.

Whatever the event contact Ralph and he will listen to your needs and will then produce a poem. It can take a week to write and edit a poem so contact as soon as possible

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