• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: birdsong

time

19 Thursday May 2022

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2022, 7*, afternoon, birdsong, breeze, Carol, chaos, chorus, doppler, echo, Emmett's Gardens, garden, jet plane, morning, pigeons, pine, shadow, silence, sky, speech, sun, time, tulip, walls, watching

                                                an array of peaceful jet-scores
                                                across the sky never colliding
                                                welcome to Emmett’s Gardens

                                    time

                        various pine shadow of afternoon
                        away from height of morning sun
                        beyond the rose garden wall

                        held from chaos by the chorus
                        of chivourrts, ch-hwhtts and echoed pigeons
                        from the facing proscenium …

                        … ah, we’ve missed the tulips
                        just stalks top-heavy no we haven’t
                        said Carol watching them twaddle

they doppler even as we watch
between breezes some coming low
to land behind the pines

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

afternoon wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’
breeze & morning & speech wormhole: Journey
Carol & silence wormhole: ‘‘she shook the sweets …’
echo wormhole: travel // when I die
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
pigeons wormhole: municipal garden
pine wormhole: out
shadow & sky & sun wormhole: taking birth
time wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
tulip wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
walls wormhole: silence

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/emmetts-garden

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2019, 7*, birdsong, camera, clouds, corridor, dancing, drifting, elm, evening, faces, fields, focus, forest, gold, grey, hills, horizon, leaves, nebula, nightingale, photography, planet, purple, red, skeleton, sky, space, spire, stars, sun, thinking, trees, words

                                I took my camera into the fields

                but it was only after the
                purple-grey clouds drifted
                across the horizon and the

                wilted leaves had turned
                their face once more to the
                evening sky, when the sun

                broke low across the fields –
                old gold across the treetops –
                that I’d dansed macabre

                with the tripodial skeleton
                before the red hemisphere,
                reclined upon distant hills,

                extinguished like a farce
                and the populace of the
                heavens radiated above me

                and behind, the grates of
                all space between the two
                sentinel elms, it was there, I think,

                I left this planet
                at a tangent (glow of a
                lantern disappearing down the corridor)

                deep, until whole nebulae
                were within my pluck,
                but even before Antares

                had touched the nearby
                spire, the nightingale had
                been deep in construction

                of the following day’s forest façade,
                free free of all possible words and
                zoomed foci

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

clouds & evening & gold & grey & hills & horizon & leaves & red & sky & space & stars & sun wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
dancing wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
faces wormhole: on facing the Have
purple wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
thinking wormhole: writening
words wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1967, afternoon, air, beauty, being, birdsong, black, breathing, camera, candle, church, clouds, colour, comet, consciousness, corridor, countryside, dance, dawn, depth, earth, elm, emotion, evening, eyes, fields, fire, gaze, gold, grey, heat, hills, horizon, identity, jade, leaves, life, light, mauve, Michael J Redford, mind, night, orbit, painting, photography, planet, rain, red, silence, silhouette, sky, space, spire, stars, storm, sun, sunset, the Boats of Vallisneria, thunder, trees, turquoise, valley, west

Sky

One evening about two years ago, there was, in my part of the country, one of the most magnificent sunsets that I have ever been privileged to witness.   Being a keen photographer (although not a very good one, for other peoples’ photographs always seem better than mine), I took my camera into the fields to capture the scene in colour.   It all began when the grey broken clouds, the ‘left overs’ of a stormy day, drifted slowly across the horizon, taking with them the tumult of the heavens.   It had been a somewhat dismal day with an atmosphere that clung like a warm damp blanket, enveloping all with an oppressive heat that made even the unconscious act of breathing an effort.   The day thus sulked its way through the hours, stifling the energy of life and suffocating the songs of birds until at long last, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky, no longer able to contain its pent up emotions, savaged the countryside with a violent storm.   In fact three storms had tumbled into the valley that afternoon that gave rise to a continuous end-of-the-world -like thunder that reverberated about us for an hour and a half.   Fearful though the storms were, the rain felt good, the soil quenched its thirst and the air became cool, and when the storm had flung its final volley of anger contemptuously at us, I saw that the wilted leaves had renewed vigour and had turned their faces once more to the sky.   Suddenly, the late evening sun broke loose and shone low across the fields, igniting the treetops with a blaze of old gold and adorning the scene with the tint of an old master’s painting. Screwing tripod to camera, I raised it to my eye and squinted through the view-finder.   For some moments I indulged in a danse macabre around the field with the tripodial skeleton stiff within my embrace, searching for the most artistic composition to enter the field of view.   By now the sun was an enormous dull-red hemisphere reclining upon the distant hills, infusing the undersides of the remaining clouds above with a heavy mauve the deepened perceptively as I gazed.   The solar chord became shorter and shorter until finally the perimeter of the disc was extinguished suddenly by the horizon as one snuffs out the flame of a candle.   Then, in a most abrupt and startling manner, the populace of the heavens turned to fire.   The clouds appeared to radiate from a point somewhere below the horizon in the vicinity of the sun and spread out above and behind me, plumbing the very depths of space itself.   It was as if Earth had entered the tail of a super comet that had passed close by on its elliptical orbit about the sun.   Hurriedly I set the tripod firmly on the ground and framed the sunset between the jet-black silhouettes of two sentinel elms.

After taking the photograph, I packed the equipment in its case, stood up and looked once more through the elms.   My gaze passed by the silent trees, through the sunset and beyond into space, leaving the great orb of this planet at a tangent.   The moment developed into one of those rare intervals in time when an overwhelming consciousness of the beauty about one descends and becalms the mind.   Although my gaze flew past the elms at incomprehensible speed, I was aware of their crisp outlines against the sky, and as it passed on through the sky into the depths of space, I could see the fire shrinking before me like the glow of a lantern disappearing down a long, dark corridor.   My eyes were now being lifted by a power exterior to my own being.   Up, up they went until I was craning my neck and gazing out into the zenith of space.   I had always been conscious of the great depths of space about me, but could not help regarding the heavens as anything but a dome viewed from a central point, the stars being spattered over the surface of this invisible hemisphere, all equidistant from me.   But on this particular occasion, I became aware of the three dimensionality of space, each planet, star and nebula standing out in such relief from each other, that I felt I could lift my hand and pluck them from their ethereal settings.   Immediately above my right shoulder the crooked W of Cassiopeia pierced the depths with startling clarity and midway between this and the great square of Pegasus, there glowed faintly the spiral nebula of Andromeda, so far flung into the void as to make the magnificent gold and blue binary system of Gamma Andromeda appear but ten steps distant.

Becoming dizzy from the depths above me I turned and cast my eyes down to the eastern horizon.   The Pleiades had just shown itself above the distant trees and was discernible only by averted vision, but its presence was sufficient to tell me that within the hour Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus, would begin its journey above the horizon to dissolve overhead in the light of tomorrow’s dawn.   But even before Antares had touched the distant church spire in the darkening west, the night air became chill and with a shudder I headed for home.

Some days later when I had the film processed, I discovered much to my dismay, that I had become so involved with the scene before me that I had forgotten to remove the dust-cap from the lens, consequently I have no visual proof to offer my friends of the glory I have witnessed.   Often I am accused of exaggeration when describing a scene that has made an impression on me, yet I experience difficulty in finding adjectives of sufficient depth, colour or subtlety to use in such instances.   How can one convey to others the emotions that rise to greet the song of a nightingale, or to what depths the heart yearns to fly with the swift and embrace all three dimensions.   How can one possibly convey through the medium of the written or spoken word the sight of an evening sky washed with the faint mauve streaks that herald a sunset, or describe the background tint of the sky that is somewhere between a shade of jade and turquoise?

My attempts at describing this beautiful sunset to a friend met with very little response.   Emotion is a very personal thing and that which gives rise to emotion in one, may leave another completely cold.   Even so, I was completely taken aback when my friend said, “what sunset?”

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

afternoon & grey & rain & red & sky wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
air & silence & trees wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
beauty wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
being & black wormhole: in deed
breathing wormhole: there will be ovations
church & silhouette wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
clouds wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
dawn & storm wormhole: birth in the world
evening & life wormhole: threshold to behold
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
gold wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
hills wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
horizon & sunset wormhole: in turgid reflection
identity wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
leaves wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
light & sun wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
mauve wormhole: travelling / back
mind wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
night wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
space wormhole: the reach turned to love
stars wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
valley wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs

20 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

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Tags

1967, apples, birdsong, cabbage, carrot, character, ears, eating, eyes, face, feet, field, fight, food, garden, humanity, living, Michael J Redford, morning, mud, piglets, pigs, pink, potato, pregnancy, presence, smell, smile, snoring, speech, speed, the Boats of Vallisneria, time

With Pigs

“Trouble is, you can smell ‘em a mile off.”   This was said not by a townsman as one would expect, but by a countryman.   He was referring to pigs and his observation was indicative of the general opinion and stigma that has surrounded the pig from time immemorial.   “The pig,” said Mrs Grundy, “is a disgusting creature of filthy habits who lives in a dark, odoriferous hovel and wallows in mud.   It is a creature whose appetite can never be satiated and is like a dustbin on four legs that will receive almost anything into its ever-open mouth and will, without a flicker of conscience, steal the last morsel of food from its neighbour.”   There is in fact a remarkable similarity between the pig and many humans.   Perhaps these are strong words, but then the smell of a pig kept in such conditions is even stronger and whose fault is it but that of its keeper.   The pig is essentially a clean animal.   True, it loves to make a mud wallow in the corner of a field on a hot day when the gnats are biting, but one can hardly call this dirty, especially when some females of the human family pay to have it plastered all over their faces and the males of the species come home covered from head to foot after playing games all afternoon in it.   Given plenty of clean straw, a sow will make a comfortable nest for herself and her offspring and will rarely foul her bed with droppings.   She reserves the brightest corner of the sty for this and even the young piglets instinctively use this special corner without any training whatsoever.   Because of this, it has been known for young pigs to be effectively house-trained.   A pig enjoys his food, he takes no pains to disguise the fact, and is usually most grateful for any special tit-bit that comes his way, refusing the offering only when he is ill.   Generally speaking, a hungry pig is a healthy pig.

Pigs are a happy and friendly people.   They are never too preoccupied (except when feeding – and that goes for many humans as well) to pass the time of day, and will chatter away for as long as you care to stay.   All they ask in return for the honour of their presence is a scratch behind the ear or a rub on the belly.   Unlike most people I have pigs at the bottom of my garden – not fairies, and I invariably spend a couple of hours therein each day.   After pottering around for some minutes there steals over me a strong feeling of a presence close at hand watching me with a purposeful eye destined to catch my attention.   I turn and find myself gazing into the friendly face of old Split Ear, a black and white Essex sow who has lived at the piggery now for some six or seven years.   Her name, though not very romantic, is appropriate, for her left ear had been rent asunder in her younger days from a fight with a barbed wire fence, and as the ears of this particular breed droop forward and cover the eyes, Split Ear would gaze quizzically at me through the hole in her ear, head cocked slightly to one side.   In early days when I first made her acquaintance, this feeling of being watched was a little disturbing.   She would stand stock still eyeing me in that cock-eyed manner of hers, noting with precision every move I made.   I mistook her friendly gaze of interest for one of criticism and became so annoyed with her that, early one March morning, I hurled a cabbage stalk at her which bounced off her snout and landed at her feet.   She sniffed at it, turned it over and, as she gazed up at me, I perceived that a delighted smile had spread across her face.   From that moment on we became close friends, and we would pass away many a pleasant moment in each other’s company.   I came to know and respect her many habits and fads and she in turn would confide in me her most intimate secrets.   One fine spring morning she told me that she was twelve weeks gone and had only another three to go.   We counted the days together and as she grew bigger and bigger and the great day approached, she developed a strong desire for sour apples.   I would offer a selection of tasty morsels such as a cabbage leaf, a potato, a carrot and an apple.   Each time she would eat the apple first and only when she realised that no more apples were forthcoming, would she set about devouring the remaining items.   Eventually the great day arrived and she disappeared into the maternity ward.   A week later, when he confinement was over, she proudly paraded her young ones before me for my inspection.   There were fourteen in all and a very even bunch they were too.   Normally a litter contains one or two piglets that are smaller and weaker than the rest, the runts, or cads as they are sometimes called, but old Split Ear’s troupe was so evenly matched, it was impossible to tell them apart.

All young animals have an innocence and a charm about them, but young piglets, to my mind, are the most endearing of all.   Their character can be likened to those of mischievous little schoolboys, full of fun and pranks and as happy as the day is long.   Often I would creep up on them unobserved to watch their antics, particularly on those days that invariably crop up from time to time when nothing goes right, and I am soon elevated from the doldrums by their uninhibited gaiety, it is a therapy that never fails.   Approach them silently, enjoy their antics awhile, then step from your hiding place. Instantly they freeze into diminutive statues, poised on the very tips of their dainty toes and, with not a quiver of muscle between them, they peer wickedly at you from the corners of their eyes.   Then suddenly, one of them will utter a staccato bark which is the signal for the tumult to continue.   These little creatures are so keen to be off that despite violent activity from their legs, they make no forward progress for several seconds and in spite of their efforts, remain in the same spot kicking up clouds of dust behind them.   Eventually their feet find a grip and they shoot off in all directions with the speed of bullets.   Owing to the momentum of these little pink projectiles, collisions are common and these frequently lead to fights in which all and sundry take part.   Noisy though it is, the melee rarely produces a serious casualty – a few scratched ears, grazed bellies and nipped tails perhaps, but seldom anything more serious and the cause of dissention is soon forgotten.   The only other occasion on which a difference of opinion is likely to occur is that of the feed time scrum down.   The normal pattern of events here is that one piglet is gradually squeezed off the end of the line until he finds himself out in the cold and teat-less.   With unabated fury, he then hurls himself upon his fellow diners which immediately causes someone else to be pushed off the other end.   This sets up a cycle of events that flags only when the energy begins to fail and the bellies begin to fill, and soon nothing is heard but the song of a bird and the satisfied snoring of pigs.

Likening them once more to schoolchildren, it is surprising how quickly they grow up, how quickly the irrepressible energy of youth is funnelled into mature and profound thoughts that mould the character.   And pigs do think – of this I am convinced.   One has merely to accept them and to treat them as equals to discover their thoughtful looks, their smiles of delight and to understand their many moods which are so very much like our own.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

eyes & morning & time wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
feet wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
field wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
garden wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
living wormhole: only
pink wormhole: we held cold hands
smell wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
smile wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
speech wormhole: despite that

 

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mauve

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

1973, 2017, 6*, birdsong, blue, buildings, clouds, dusk, gold, hills, horizon, left, lime, mauve, mist, olive, right, sidewalk, sky, Steely Dan, streets, sun, syncopation, white

                                mauve
                                {Your Gold Teeth}

                in 1973
                                waste bins jumped up
                                                syncopated
                                                                all down the sidewalk

                down the street apiece
                                the olive and mist
                                                second-floor horizon
                                                                looked left

                                                                before the hills
                                                sun going down
                                in a Prussian sky
                {West of Hollywood}

                                to the right to the left
                                the bird on the single

                                remaining post called
                                the last lime skeak

                                to white curds above
                                the darkening hills

 


 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: Bridgnorth
buildings wormhole: between
clouds wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
gold & sky wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
hills & mauve wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
horizon wormhole: travelling // arrival
lime wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory
mist wormhole: is this it // all the time
olive wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
streets wormhole: coagulating
sun wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
white wormhole: sharpened apex

 

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Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2011, 2014, 2017, 6*, architecture, birds, birdsong, blackbird, blue, branches, breathing, brick, bus, cars, change, child, childhood, church, coat, coffee, coffee shop, crane, crows, death, echo, Eglinton Hill, evening, football, friends, green, handshake, Have, hill, houses, lifetimes, light, looking, mother, Mum, newsagent, no effort, notice, passing, pigeons, Plumstead, Plumstead common, quiet, roads, smiling, sound, step, streets, Thames, thought, time, trees, voices, walking, white, windows, Woolwich

        Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211

        the crane holds effortlessly over from behind
        the houses and trees cables thrumming always
        cold and eventually it will all be dismantled;

        the diesel car purred slowly downhill, a pigeon
        dropped down behind it walked around a bit;
        through the leaf-clean branches of the young

        tree the Edwardian cornices and tops along
        Plumstead Common Road, don’t collect thoughts,
        t a s t e them without notice, deep and wet

        with no tice – much less effort – while walking,
        every once in a while the wall steps up a brick
        I search for being clear again … step, while

        walking stop, and breathe the beauty, stop
        and smile a little thought for you; in St. Mary
        Magdalene’s ground the mother has turned

        points to the trees, birds fly off and land, the
        toddler steps and stands among the pigeons
        while the mother brings the abandoned scooter

        but then in New Road holding the handshake
        shaking between exchange the firm friends
        look at each other only occasionally; while he

        he Had a coffee heated sandwich iced bun
        crisps water £8.89, busses passing bulbous
        over the dark green and hanging shade; up

        the hill on the coldstreet stepping downhill
        out the newsagent the bright blue padded
        jacket and the single bounce of a well-inflated

        basketball with simultaneous echo inside; the
        while on a wall opposite his Mum’s flat dead
        almost 12 years now watching a boy with a limp

        and the 53 bus working between parked cars
        and the crossing island with air suspension
        and when it was quiet the dark coat and white

        trainers crossed the road paused and into the
        newsagents but then I didn’t see where she
        went; the constant echo of boys’ voices playing

        football on Plumstead Common off Acacia
        Terrace 1890; and I can’t see 46 Eglinton Hill
        where I’m sat, conifers grow so quick, but

        `doesn’t matter, I can’t see the blackbird singing
        a different collect each time either; crows on the
        chimneys of 40/38; for a minute the blackbird

        stopped no vehicles uphill downhill, lights
        went on across the river and each house had
        the face of lifetimes in their windows;

 

Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, in time; those who know Woolwich and Plumstead (all none of you across the world wide, as far as I can tell, although you have got Google maps, if you’re really interested) will [be able to] recognise as they appear: South Circular coming up to Well Hall roundabout, Eglinton Hill [childhood home], Plumstead Common Road, St Mary Magdelene’s Church, Woolwich New Road, [along A206], Waverley Crescent (top of Griffin Road), Plumstead Common (proper), back up Eglinton Hill …

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

architecture wormhole: pen and ruler
birds wormhole: open window
blackbird & change wormhole: relief
blue wormhole: low afternoon
branches wormhole: between
breathing & coffee shop & evening & sound & time & windows wormhole: amid
bus wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III
cars & green & trees wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
child & streets wormhole: red / lacquer / door
childhood wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
church wormhole: ‘someone …’
coffee wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I
crane wormhole: Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it
crows wormhole: the ancient tree
death & light & Mum wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
echo wormhole: circuitry
Eglinton Hill & Plumstead wormhole: lost and city ground
Have & looking wormhole: found
lifetimes wormhole: cape and cowl
mother wormhole: mother and daughter
passing & roads & leaves wormhole: leaves
pigeons wormhole: municipal garden
quiet wormhole: the quiet whale
Thames wormhole: to rescue something
thought wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
voices wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
walking wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
Woolwich wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams

 

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ssreet chak-chak

09 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2013, 5*, Ashdown Forest, birdsong, blue, branches, gorse, hills, sky, sound

                ssreet chak-chak

                the gorse branch
                the stone chat

                and the high blue sky
                distant as the hills

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Ashdown Forest wormhole: nothing to write
blue & sky wormhole: 1968
branches wormhole: monument to vainglory
hills wormhole: relief
sound wormhole: somewhere

 

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open window

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2013, 5*, birds, birdsong, blue, echo, houses, open, passing, quiet, sky, snow, sound, streets, sun, time, trees, windows

                open window

                in the quiet street
                sun shone against
                the sides of houses

                and began to melt
                the dust of snow,
                at length,

                soft steps pass –
                foot-scrape and
                trouser-scuff – then

                cough once twice
                in upper voice
                down the houses

                and it was only then
                that the birds called
                in different ways

                in different trees and
                all of which echoed
                down the blue blue sky

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

birds wormhole: Is There / Life on Mars? – poewieview #32
birdsong wormhole: relief
blue & quiet & sky & sound & windows wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
echo wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
open wormhole: fine
passing wormhole: to allow / passage
snow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
streets wormhole: familiasyncopation
sun wormhole: 1964
time wormhole: alighted
trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose

 

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relief

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

'scape, 2013, 5*, birdsong, blackbird, change, continuity, hills, Lewes, relief, twilight

                      such a relief
                      as the daylight

                      fades and the
                      hills of Lewes

                      darken
                      the blackbird

                      continues to
                      chirp

                      in a hundred
                      different ways

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

blackbird wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
change wormhole: comfy
hills wormhole: 1966
Lewes wormhole: well,
twilight wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 2 Comments

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'scape, 1967, 5*, Atlantic, birdsong, birth, black, blackbird, blue, branches, brick, countryside, death, echo, elm, eyes, fields, flower, garden, green, Greenwich, grey, hate, hills, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, May, Michael J Redford, morning, pastel, pigs, pink, rain, red, rhythm, school, silence, sky, snow, sound, sparrows, stillness, summer, sun, swifts, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, vertical, village, walls, white, wind, windows, winter, woodland, world, yellow

Snow

There is a great expectancy in waiting for the snow to begin.   Sometimes the snow comes with the wind when the trees are flailing and the Ruddock ruffles his breath beneath the trembling ivy.   Then, the contours of the land become accentuated, blackened on the leeward side to eye-shocking contrast to the whiteness on each other.   Each iron furrow stands in stark relief, a symbol of winter’s Herculean grip.   And where the skimming flakes have hurled themselves upon the wooded hills, each twig upon every branch, each branch upon every tree, hugs close a spectral image and hazel coppices become an abstraction of diverging verticals.

Sometimes however, the snow comes upon us unheralded; its approach is silent; no movement is seen among the fields or felt upon the cheek.   Somewhere below, the dormouse sleeps, and as the sparrow waits in the hedge I find myself walking with reverent steps as if, when in a house of worship, one feels the presence of the graven saints.   Eventually I must pause in my tracks, feeling guilty of the very movement of my limbs when all else is still; and in the greyness of the sky there is but the faintest suggestion of pink.   On a woodland bank the adventurous lesser periwinkle displays a solitary blue flower and from the old red-brick garden wall of the big house on the hill, the ivy casts down a leaf that slips rhythmically from side to side like the baton of the music teacher in the village school below.   The leaf touches the ground and a snowflake touches the cheek.   The eye is directed from the sky to the black background of the woods and a million flakes are seen; a million pieces of perfection yet each one different to the other.   In the classroom below thirty pairs of wide eyes turn to the window and the rising undercurrent of excitement is checked by the teacher’s baton.   I would indeed be guilty of a grave hypocrisy if I were to say that only young hearts flutter with excitement at this particular moment, for I too have never outgrown my love for the snow and look forward to the white, silent world to come.

Of course, snow brings with it its hardships as do the frosts, the winds and the rains.   They bring discomfort and sometimes death to the aged, the sick and to the wildlife about us.   But then so do the searing hot summers that parch the earth and lay heavy upon the fevered brow.   Always there is something inimical to or destructive of life, yet at the same time and in many cases because of it, life is somehow strengthened.   I remember how uneasy I once felt when harrowing a field of oats for the very first time.   The teeth of the harrow clawed at the tender green shoots, breaking and bruising them, threatening to tear them bodily from the soil.   Had I misunderstood my employer’s instructions? Was this really what he wanted me to do?   And yet two months later, despite its apparent destruction, there stood before me a field of rippling, luscious green.   If we were to hate all things that displayed an ugly side, there would be nothing left in the world to love.

This morning the window panes were covered with acanthus and the sun was a flat yellow disc that could be viewed without hurt to the eye.   The mist seemed to smooth the scene into a two dimensional pasteboard picture which gave the impression that I could reach out and touch the pastel blue hills across the valley.   I donned an additional thick-knitted woollen jersey, pulled on my gumboots and gloves and stepped from the warm steamy kitchen into the sparkling garden.   The brilliance and frostiness of the air sent the blood racing to my cheeks and my ears began to tingle.   In the piggery at the bottom of the garden, a mother sow with her nine three week old piglets were taking the air.   The little ‘piggles’ as they were sometimes called in this area, were racing around with their snouts down, like little pink snow ploughs forging furrows in the frost encrusted snow.   As I approached, their heads jerked up and, like tiny pink statues, they eyed me for a brief second before turning on their heels and hurtling across the piggery barking (or were they laughing) at the morning sun.   The impression of nudity that young piglets must give must be seen to be believed, and the sight of these nude little bodies coursing through the snow set me shivering.   I once heard of a sow who, in preference to the warm, dry sty supplied by her human master, built her nest in the corner of a field, and nothing on earth would induce her to return to the comfort of the ‘maternity’ ward.   Early the following, bitterly cold, morning, she was found burrowed deeply within her nest with an army of piglets lined up at the milk bar with the most ridiculous expressions of contentment upon their faces.   Not ten feet distant, a robin alighted on the solid water of the cattle trough and proclaimed the good news to the world.

However, it was too cold to stand watching the antics of these endearing little creatures (I dare not think of the hours wasted in this way during the warmer days) so I entered the lane that led to the fields.   The dull klunk klunk of axe striking wood came to my ears and I saw through a gap in the snow-bound hedge the rhythmic rise and fall of my neighbour’s arm as he stooped over a pile of logs.   The sound bounced across the fields to the woods and back again with such clarity, that I half expected the echo to continue as he laid his axe aside.   He saw me, nodded at me and said, “Morning”.   I nodded at him.   “Morning”.

The countryman has an almost psycho-analytic method of extracting information from the unwary traveller.   By a few pointed remarks or statements he finds out all he wants to know without having asked a single question.   Having lived in the countryside for half my life, I have developed to a lesser degree the same technique.   I did verbal battle with him for five minutes but my defences began to crumble when he said, “Better watch that plank over the stream, bound to be slippery with all that frost on it.”

“I expect it is,” I said, “Still, the tread of these boots is almost new.”

Now he knew where I was going, for the plank in question bridged the stream that ran along the north side of the woods.

“Surprising how much longer it takes to get across country when there’s frost and snow about.”   He peered at me from the corners of his eyes.   “Best get a move on or else you’ll be late.”

I gave in.

“That’s true, but then I’m only out for a stroll.”

Questioning my sanity, he returned to his chopping and I to my walk.

It has often been said by the townsman (although having spent most of my childhood in the grimy streets of Greenwich I no longer regard myself as a townsman) that the countryside is ‘all very well’ in summer, but ‘muddy, dismal and uninteresting’ in winter.   Muddy it may well be, but it is clean mud, untainted by diesel oil, slime and soot.   As for being dismal, are they so blind they cannot see the beauty in a curtain of falling rain brushing the distant hills, or hear the music of a million drops of water among the shining leaves or smell the fragrance of freshly dampened earth?   Can they not see the beauty that I see now, of glistening white lacework of the frosted elms against a crystal clear sky, and undulating fields of virgin snow, pure and smooth, a countenance of innocence that has yet to bear the mark of man’s impropriety?

In the days of winter when the hedgerows are empty and the ditches and river banks laid bare, one can discover more easily the badger’s sett or the otter’s holt.   One is able to make a mental note of where the blackbird is likely to build his nest; perhaps the disused nest of a song thrush now exposed by the skeletal hedge will eventually house the spotted white eggs of the blue tit in the warm days of May to come.   Close scrutiny of tree and bush will reveal a host of living green buds wrapped tightly in their protective coats; life is expanding beneath the frozen ground, straining to burst forth, and even as the blackbird sings, the lambs are falling.   The countryside in winter is not dead; there is life, vibrant and pulsing as the blood in one’s veins.   It is all around, above one’s head and below one’s feet.   It is not winter that dispels life, but life that dispels winter.   The immigrant swift brings with it the warm southern winds and life throughout the land erupts, forcing the icy blasts, the snows and the frosts into the North Atlantic.   And after all, without winter, there would be no spring.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

black & talking wormhole: returning home handsome
blackbird & echo & fields wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
blue & rain & sky wormhole: the too big moon
branches & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
death & white wormhole: the 19th century
eyes & morning & sun wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
garden wormhole: what life went on
green & grey & life & red & silence & walls & windows wormhole: did I get old?
hills wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
kitchen & school wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
love & sound wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
pink wormhole: languidly close the portal
snow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
sparrows wormhole: tired
stillness wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
trees wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
valley wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
winter wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
world wormhole: let it all go
yellow wormhole: magnificent salad

 

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