sweet chestnut

Tags

2015, 6*, ageing, air, being, buttress, chestnut tree, compromise, earth, generations, grass, growth, identity, leaf, letting go, life, reaching, time, trees, trunk

                     sweet chestnut

                     I have
                     long
                     since
                shifted the earth apart
                imperceptible for grass to grow,
                now, unknowing, so new;

                     I have
                     forgotten
                what it’s like to emerge
                without design, and have
                grown buttresses for so long
                they have twisted to comprise;

                     the trunk
                     of upward
                     direction
                that I reach from
                aimlessly with diminishing wisdom
                to a top leaf shifting

                     this way
                     and that
                     between air

 

{there is some anger and sulk that I do not write anymore: not sure if I couldn’t keep up the hi-octane perception or that ‘I was only seeking attention’ explains it all; I still don’t know, but maybe I don’t need to hold such stoic upper lips about it all, arms crossed, turned away; maybe just a bit of compassion wafting this way and that …}

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
being wormhole: silence
compromise & letting go wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
grass wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity wormhole: a far grander / Sangha
life wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
trees wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’

 

‘she shook the sweets …’

Tags

'scape, 1981, 6*, bed, blog, buildings, Carol, clouds, green, grey, lightning, London, love, marriage, Plumstead, red, seagull, Shooters Hill, silence, sky, smoke, Thames, time, wind

she shook the sweets
onto the bed

the grey sky
washed clean

metal smoke rose
then right-angled

a seagull
flew between the buildings

then

 

lightning

{the sweets were Lindt chocolates, individually wrapped in deep-red; the made bed was covered by a deep-green candlewick bed-spread; she was Carol, shortly before or after we were married, staying in what had been my bedroom, halfway up Shooters Hill, overlooking the Thames basin; this was the first poem I published on this blog, almost exactly ten years ago, and, in those early days, she got very little … no views; I think she deserves more than that; want a sweet?}

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

buildings & red & Thames wormhole: travel // when I die
Carol wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
clouds wormhole: here today and …
green & sky & time wormhole: meanwhile
grey wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
lightning wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
London wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
love wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
Plumstead wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
seagull wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: silence
wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1934, cheek, child, glass, hands, innocence, lap, nose, passing, sitting, tears, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW

While she sits
there
 
with tears on
her cheek
 
her cheek on
her hand
 
this little child
who robs her
 
knows nothing of
his theft
 
but rubs his
nose

 

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW

She sits with
tears on
 
her cheek
her cheek on
 
her hand
the child
 
in her lap
his nose
 
pressed
to the glass

 

from Poems 1934
I prefer the second one, but I can’t fully appreciate the second one without the bed of the first one; which is why WCW had them this way, I guess; this is observed compassion, not getting-in-the-way compassion, not judging compassion; it is the compassion of a passing stream

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

child & sitting & windows & woman wormhole: silence
glass wormhole: Four Noble Truths
hands wormhole: psssssh
passing & William Carlos Williams wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
tears wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

meanwhile

Tags

2020, 6*, afternoon, angle, binoculars, blue, cranes, curtains, Eiffel Tower, flags, gorge, green, hope, horizon, mankind, moon, night, rite, rooftops, sea, seagulls, shape, ships, sitting room, sky, sound, stone, time, Tintin, travelling, walking, warehouses, water

                the seagulls, they glide about the
                cranes and warehouse rooftops

                they wheel above the pacing and fro,
                cut between pulleys and raised pennants

                oblivious to distant headland through
                studied binocular pointing out to sea, back in the day

                when the skies were afternoon-blue
                and the sea still sitting-room-green

                then, when there was dare to hope
                and ships anchored on the horizon

                under curtain-drapes of nightest sky
                while the moon snagged in line from

                fore-mast to prow; nevertheless, they
                trekked over crag and gorge, they walked

                through water and pushed through
                trapezoids – slab! – into rooms of stone

                locked and immovable despite
                horizon, fit or ninety degree angle

                oblivious to mankind’s rite and dress;
                meanwhile the twins climbed the tower

 

c’mon, now: a gold-plated no-prize to the first reader who can tell me which book this piece came from to celebrate my return to writing; perception – knowing what’s going on – is never as linear as it might seem to be in a story; already given that there is breadth and depth, even in the scant of depiction, there is usually a time (and a space, and we know how relative those two can be) during which something happens, but let’s not think that these are the only dimensions – there is always a right-angle to be taken that paisley-swirls to a far-wider cauldron than could have initially never been conceived but of which there were pre-echoes if listening askance intently-enough

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon & horizon & sky wormhole: travelling,
blue wormhole: silence
cranes wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Eiffel Tower wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
green wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
moon wormhole: ‘not sure …’
night & water wormhole: riders of the night
rooftops wormhole: travel // when I die
sea wormhole: then
seagulls wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
sitting room wormhole: the sitting room
sound wormhole: Four Noble Truths
stone wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: travel // when I die
travelling wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: breakfast

 

a far grander / Sangha

Tags

2019, 6*, identity, mother sentient beings, Priory, Sangha, self, self-image, Swarthmore Hall, thinking

                went to Swarthmore Hall
                brandishing my fragile self
                to open up to all beings

                went back to the Priory
                with rising grandeurs
                of delusion; shall I

                relinquish this flaw
                of expecting I am so much
                more than I appear if only

                I were understood …;
                then perhaps I could be
                more than I could ever

                understand and recognise
                these beings as already
                my own and take

                my one and lonely
                place with a far grander
                Sangha than I could ever have allowed

 

‘Swarthmore Hall’ is where the Quakers began, Carol did a course there; it is in Ulverston in South Cumbria where we lived soon after we married and started our family, we were aware of the place at the time, but not as students; ‘the Priory’ just outside Ulverston is the Manjushri Institute, a Buddhist college that we lived in; this was the first time I’d been back to visit in 32 years; and … this is the last poem I wrote – 4th September 2019 – I haven’t written one since, not seized to, not tipped towards; I have been letting a lot of things go during these beginning years of my retirement, even my Batman comics … maybe more a spiral than a circle …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

identity wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: silence

 

silence

Tags

2019, 5*, being, blue, child, clothes, doing, emptiness, light, mother, others, perseverance, Quakers, shadow, shape, silence, sitting, sun, thinking, walls, windows, woman

                                silence

                there –
                in the round

                some threw fluting gapes
                three to engulf the fourth

                some were cleaved peacefully
                head from leading shoulder

                some wore a chemise, others a shalwar,
                others a collar, one a hand-towel draped quickly over the shoulder be back in a minute

                one projected flanks like enveloping wings
                unaware as she nodded

                her neighbour bathed in the same return, the other sat
                comfortably on nothing at all

                the man held the frame
                with perseverance to allow the shape

                the woman privately understood
                most of what everyone thought, only the

                child contained in the mothers’ arm
                watched the walls dance phantasmagoric

                and only the windows let in
                the blue blue sun

 

Quakers sit in light to worship

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & sitting wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
blue & windows wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
child wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
doing & light & thinking wormhole: Four Noble Truths
emptiness wormhole: none and all
mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
others & shadow wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
silence wormhole: travel // when I die
sun wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
walls wormhole: looking hard enough
woman wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902

 

Four Noble Truths

Tags

2019, 7*, Bodhichitta, doing, doors, eyes, fly, flying, food, Four Noble Truths, glass, ignorance, liberation, light, sound, suffering, thinking

Four Noble Truths

                and here comes the fly
                brandishing eye-bulbs in seventeen directions

                unaware of in or out
                looking for light or food to go

                finds one truth against the glass and
                findsssszzz the second against the glass

                in seventeen different directions
                at once – in to the room straight

                by my head: do I duck and swat
                (hideous temptation that shudder reminds me

                 no), do I guide it’s flight with foolscap sheet
                (and look at those bodies hung en-wrapped in cornered webs

                 no), the door remains open,
                it has but to fly through, the remaining

                two truths unfound and all unrealised; may the
                supreme and precious jewel

                Bodhichitta take birth
                where it has not yet done so

                where it has taken birth
                may it not decrease but may it increase

                infinitely

 

what more fitting way to conclude this meditating-occupation than the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths (there is suffering in life, suffering is caused by grasping, grasping can be loosed, by letting it all go) for liberation and Bodhichitta to extend that liberation universally …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Bodhichitta wormhole: none and all
doing & sound wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
doors wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
glass & light wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: despite all / depiction

 

‘and is there homage …’

Tags

2019, 6*, being, doing, equipoise, fields, geranium, immanence, leaves, mantra, rain, river, sitting, sound, Tara, trees, words

                and is there homage to the
                Venerable Arya Tara who sits whole

                within the river crucible one
                and severally to behold; her

                laughter of TUTTARE always
                through those trees, her huge knee

                bent graceful in a thousand diminutive equipoises,
                her right leg stretching out and out

                over rolling fields and far away;
                does she hum with

                proximate mass, does she remain
                when words have stopped –

                no, shh, listen to the fluvial rains,
blink, look at the geranium leaves

 

this is the running couplet to here today and …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & trees wormhole: here today and …
leaves wormhole: looking hard enough
rain & sound wormhole: travel // when I die
river wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sitting wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Tara wormhole: Tara mantras
words wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields

 

here today and …

Tags

'scape, 2019, 7*, being, Blake, breeze, clouds, creation, field, hedge, stillness, Totnes, tractors, trees, valley

                and are those clouds
                bent double in-Newton musculature

                poised in-dreadful calliper
                wide across the vale; no,

                no: the tractor makes field up
                in-possible way, and the breeze

                in-forms the trees constant
                even when still; and lo

                there is in-fill between hedge
                and row, here today and …

 

“…till we have built …”

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & valley wormhole: ‘not sure …’
breeze & clouds wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
field wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
hedge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
stillness wormhole: eyes like petals
trees wormhole: looking hard enough

 

looking hard enough

Tags

2019, 6*, Blake, books, earth, leaves, left, life, looking, path, private, right, roots, smell, stone, streets, Totnes, trees, walls

                down to the right are paths
                wrap ‘tween stone and wall and rind up dale

                that smell of leaf over earth
                and rooting writhed and coupling too to earth

                and down to the left,
                down through constant broadcast high through leaves,

                high streets of venue and outlet to cater for
                every private over life, that

                will yield a book on Blake,
                if not looking hard enough, and books

                that you already had if you
                were

 

and … eventually you have to go into town; in the 21st century you can’t escape from the town …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

books wormhole: beneath
leaves & path wormhole: breakfast
life wormhole: despite all / depiction
looking wormhole: then
smell & stone wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
streets wormhole: riders of the night
trees wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
walls wormhole: travel // when I die