morning / cloud pass

 

 

 

                                                      morning
                                                      cloud pass

                                   how beautiful: sun
                      full through the window as I sit
                      tinting the white radiator blue I suppose
                      from the blanket around my shoulders
                      and there, to the right, a trinket of light
                      reflected from the spangles in the material
                      around the base of the shrine by my knee I suppose
                      jumping with each slow beat of my heart …

                                                      … back to
                                                      the breath

 

 

 

awareness wormhole: the pocket
reflection wormhole: ‘the Buddha statues …’

 

Science lesson

 

 

 

                                          Science lesson

                                          the brass tap of the gas
                                          outlet the earthenware
                                          brown of the rubber tube
                                          connection the blue flame
                                          within the Bunsen burner
                                          but through the wide
                                          window so many new
                                          reaches of the silhouette
                                          branches into the
                                          sapphire blue sky

 

 

 

Roan school wormhole: ‘the importance of …’
blue sky wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea

 

train journey

 

 

 

                                                              train journey

                                              a time machine
                           working oblivious through scattered
                           times frozen in brick branch window
                                and field

 

 

 

travelling wormhole: possible

 

school uniform

 

 

 

                           school uniform

                      grass too deep and green
                           to consider colour
                      stick to the tarmac grey
                           and blue to the step
                      and redbrick and flint stone
                           high to the window
                      small and greensky to reflect
                           and then

                      some boys by the ancient oak
                           have found a
                      natural high crouch and count
                           to twenty jump up
                      and someone pulls you tight around
                           the solar plexus
                      prolonged drift before blackout

 

 

 

Greenwich Park wormhole: ‘the importance of …’
Roan school wormhole: grammar
oak wormhole: grammar
blue sky wormhole: grammar

 

Leicester

 

 

 

                                     Leicester

                                              thirty years later
                                     thirty years later!

                                     with the same girl
                           laying on the bed in the Travelodge
                           bare feet crossed a big toe stroking
                           her mad red tie-across dress rucked up
                           a little over her smooth legs
                           reading a Kathy Reichs comfortingly
                           scurfing her head let nobly
                           and handsomely grey now
                           a cup of tea too hot yet
                                     to drink

                           with the constant wet rnnncsh
                           of car tyres through the
                           Southgates Underpass through the
                           open window before hand-painted

                                 F I R E P L A C E S
                           ANTIQUE & REPRODUCTION
                           ←

                               room 117                  8:51 pm

 

 

 

C wormhole: handsome
reading wormhole: ‘I wanted to write a poem’

 

session

 

 

 

                                                              session

                                there she is
                the unmoving radiator
                                              eternally white …
withherimmaculatelycraftedribsalljustwhitemetalbeforethedeepbluepaintedwall …

                                              … tired
                                raise the eyes a little:

                                                                                              there
                there
                     there
                                                              t_here
                                                                                 their
                                they’re
                                                              THERE
t^here

                                              snowflakes

 

 

 

allowing wormhole: the empty page

 

objective intimacy

 

 

 

                                                              objective intimacy

                                university tables the same
                                     after thirty years
                                wood-edged and plastic skin
                                     silent under the air conditioning
                                silent before the hills and trees and distant sea
                                     and still

                                              and always the
                                unspoken turn and shift of
                                     page … chair the sigh and pan of
                                shelf … window auras radiating … overlapping
                                     all of them
                lifelong and occasional

 

 

 

sea wormhole: promenade
Brighton wormhole: ‘my Dot …’
reading wormhole: sunny morning

 

sunny morning

 

 

 

                      after a night
                                   of no electricity where
                                   the carpets seemed like floorboards
                                              and we snuggled together in bed
                                                              un-asleep

                                              sunny morning

                      high high in the sky
            a wide band of cirrus cloud
                      allows the whole world
                                   to move its rooftops beneath it

                                              more direct
                      a jet trail cuts into it – no
                                              above it –
            drifting at fifty miles an hour
                                   I look back into my book
                      then glance back out at the poem

                      the cloud
            has magnified as it settles behind
                                   the rooftops chimneys treetops
                      the jet trail nowhere to be seen
                                              I’m sure I’d noticed it

 

 

 

chimney wormhole: wide-open / concentration
reading wormhole: the spectre

 

open / window

 

 

 

                                                              open
                                          window

                           cross-legged
                           I pulled my back straight
                           I gazed ahead and
                           oval-ed my hands

                           one breath
                                          settled

                           then the net curtains
                           lift and adjust

                           now I am really
                               settled

 

 

 

openness wormhole: the zen of grandmothers

 

chrysalissing

 

 

 

                           chrysalissing

out of a foggy life of past with just
      faint lemon lights of echo
I slightly formed vague and beguiled
      by object and window

out from the shift of role I saw
      that the whole of world
was a turning whale its form clear
      and hideous as it receded

out through the greying blue
      of bequeathed roles
decaying within the dark-wood panelling
      I searched for rooftops and breezes

out through the work to need I conceived
      mechanism sufficient to breathe
but found myself ragged and mumbling on the mauve and olive plane of squander
      ghostly to the machine

in through the tragedy of awkward shoulder oblique with neck and cranium
      and shoals of voice uniformly shifting
I settle back and breathe in through the enveloping odyssey
      homing at last

 

 

 

lemon wormhole: backseat