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 …’

 

Advertisement

SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, ageing, blossom, glass, green, grey, hair, leaves, plum, Spring, white, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING

                O my grey hairs!
                You are truly white as plum blossoms.

 

 

 

                                LINES

                Leaves are greygreen,
                the glass broken, bright green.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
there is a beauty to ageing, there is a crack to glass; which cannot be appreciated until one has shifted at right angles to the time it takes or the import it hasn’t

 

 

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

blossom wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
glass wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
green & leaves & Spring wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
hair wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
white wormhole: we held cold hands
William Carlos Williams wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams

 

getting fat in me old age

Tags

2018, 6*, ageing, bowl, growth, identity, settling, sitting, stillness

                getting fat in me old age

                if I sit still long enough
                or even for a bit, there is a

                wide and open bowl, or even
                just a dish with the slightest

                rim that contains everything
                I need as long as I don’t move:

                meet mark redford, same as the
                old one, but somehow wider

 

 

 

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

identity wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
settling wormhole: amid
sitting wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
stillness wormhole: cross-section

 

beguiled / desire

Tags

2018, 7*, ageing, death, desire, drifting, evening, hands, heart, holding onto, letting go, life, retirement, sleep, song, Ulysses

                when I tie myself to a mast
                and the evening is closing in without,

                without that song that deliciously
                extricates my beating heart I know,

                I know ‘tis time to loose those bonds
                from my numb and welt hands caught

                once again and ever by beguiled
                desire better, by far, to drift where I lie

 

 

 

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

death wormhole: moon- // washed
evening wormhole: between
hands wormhole: sufficiently away
letting go wormhole: anxiety
life wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
retirement wormhole: someone’s got to do it
sleep wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

amniotic avenue

Tags

2017, 5*, ageing, avenue, bay window, Bodhisattva Vow, change, conditioned existence, Eastbourne, Have, life, lifetimes, mother sentient beings, passing, people, perspective, promenade, shadow, shops, society, step, time, walking

                                                                amniotic avenue

                ah, here they come
                out from under the receding bay windows above

                people emerge
                by the flanking promenade of shopfronts that come and go over decades                

                ageing with each step
                and pass

by

 

 

 

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

change & life wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Eastbourne & walking wormhole: perspective
Have wormhole: it’s all about…;
lifetimes wormhole: stuck in lower realm
passing wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
people wormhole: I am not yet ready
promenade wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
shadow wormhole: with all love released
shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
society wormhole: growth
time wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}

 

sweet chestnut

Tags

2015, 4*, ageing, aimless, breeze, buttress, chestnut tree, compromise, earth, emergence, grass, growth, leaf, life, reaching, thinking, time, tree, trunk, vertical, wisdom

                      sweet chestnut

                      I have
                      long
                      since
                shifted the earth apart
                imperceptible for grass, now,
                to grow 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 between

                      the air

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: humm
compromise wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
emergence wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
life wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
thinking wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
time wormhole: for / the first time

 

Bexhill 140215

Tags

1920s, 1935, 2015, 5*, ageing, balcony, Bexhill, de la Warr Pavilion, eating, grey, horizon, line, looking, model, photographer, poem, portrait, promenade, red, sea, sun, waiting, wife

                                Bexhill 140215

                                sugar blues necksweat
                                I need to manage what I eat
                                as I age
                sitting in the de la Warr Pavilion café est. 1935

                                looking for a poem
                                between the clean lines on the balcony,
                                … waiting
                for his wife, trying the zoom lens onto the promenade

                                of a photographer
                                trying positions of his model
                                in fashion-red
                hooded coat and flower heads on her hat from the 1920s

                                on the sun-grey sea
                                with wide horizon

 

 

 

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

grey & sun wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
horizon wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
looking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
promenade wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
red wormhole: leaves
sea wormhole: concordance
waiting wormhole: just

 

slow enough / to have love

Tags

2013, adjustment, ageing, breakdown, choice, confusion, consistency, doing, freedom, land, living, love, Martin Luther King, mountain, option, presumption, quiet, recognition, saviour, secret, shame, streets, stumbling, true nature, wasteland, work

                I used to skip and side-step all the
                too-presumptive adjustments
                for consistency and do it all

                in my own sweet way
                secretly hoping for recognition
                shamefully thinking to be the saviour

                now I’m confused and made old
                stumbling and doddering by the
                too-many prescriptive options to

                exercise the choice I am offered
                so I continue to do it all in my
                own sweet way, quiet enough

                to be effective, ignored enough
                to have scope and slow enough
                to have love; I have come to

                the top of the mountain and I have
                escaped a promised land
                four times injured to within

                an inch of my own true nature
                and I roam the streets and wastelands
                now, free at last, free at last

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: strain
doing wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
living wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
love wormhole: handsome
quiet wormhole: open window
recognition wormhole: not / the Catcher
streets wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
work wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

 

did I get old?

Tags

2013, 4*, ageing, click, clouds, crimson, green, grey, identity, life, metal, questioning, red, silence, skyline, sunlight, time, voices, walls, windows

                      at which point
                between the lifting metal-crimson
                      fingers of behind
                      the skyline

                      the never sure
                when the clouds will part          once
                      and stab through
                      the window

                      and the (eventual)
                late(r) grey-green click and silence of voices
                      behind the wall
                      did I get old?

 

 

 

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

clouds & grey & silence wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
green wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
identity wormhole: Clea
life wormhole: adjustment
red wormhole: returning home handsome
skyline & walls wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
time wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
voices wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
windows wormhole: the 19th century

 

just one, open, nerve,

Tags

2016, 6*, ageing, avidhya, Granada, identity, life, nerve, opaque, realisation, self, self-compassion, sense of self, the Three Poisons

                      I have a self
                      it is my self

                      a little capsule
                      grown in life –

                      whenever I noticed
                      every time I didn’t
                      each time I wouldn’t

                      a sliver at first
                      twisted once
                      but never looped

                      back to feed,
                      no helix to hold,
                      just one, open, nerve,

                      preserved in cartilage
                      opaque: hit it
                      you bounce, cut it

                      you slip, ignore it
                      it withers leaving
                      a baggy sheath

                      time now, quickly,
                      to make amends

                      time now
                      to connect the ends

 

 

 

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

life & realisation wormhole: moment
identity wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36