• 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
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    • through the crash
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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: canopy

breakfast

10 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2019, 7*, blindness, blogging, branches, breakfast, breathing, canopy, coffee, dark, echo, energy, eyes, flash, gooseberry, ground, growth, jam, leaves, life, light, living, monkey, path, reaching, reading, samsara, seeing, shadow, sound, sunlight, toast, trees, walking, way, wind, woodland

                breakfast

                these shadows on a long walk
                through the woodland with only occasional sun

                all there, underneath the undergrowth
                cannot see the ground, the stems that grow from it

                branches reach, leaves envelope everywhere
                from nowhere; weave

                and grow round and entwine each other;
                if I lift the leaves to see my way forward –

                searching for light, searching for life
                to grow, to continue – and if I break the smaller branches to

                make way
                I will scratch my arms, sap will sting my skin, my

                eyes, I cannot see, I cannot see;
                and I won’t see; some trees

                are quicker and older (than me)
                they hold the path and reach wide,

                and creepers make them fat
                and vines hang like curtains of water;

                the canopy above, maximised
                to greatest energy, sent back down through rough wires;

                only when the wind leans
                or a monkey leaps, is there a flash of light, gone by the

                time I’ve looked back down to the path
                blinded, to see where I am

                there must be so much light somewhere
                out there, if only I weren’t stumbling around and bleeding

                … really; I come downstairs
                and breathe coffee and spiced home – made gooseberry jam on home – made toast                           

                while reading my posts … yes,
                a thousand hacks and sap in the dark

                where I cannot see
                and cannot know where I am

                a thousand ‘choks’ deferred
                the undergrowth too dense to echo

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 12: How can I attain happiness when the causes for happiness are obtained only through great effort and very rarely, and when the seeds­ of pain and sorrow are so prevalent, relentless and multifarious that they are realised easily and without any effort? And yet it is only from suffering that the thought and longing for escape and liberation from the suffering of conditioned existence will come about … therefore, O my deepest mind, hold yourself strong, patient, steadfast!

 

 

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

branches & breathing wormhole: blue sky high
coffee wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
echo & path & walking wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
eyes & life wormhole: eyes like petals
leaves & living wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
light & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
reading wormhole: {reading right to left}
samsara & sound wormhole: at Kreukenhof
seeing wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

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Puerto del Carmen

16 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2019, 6*, balcony, birth, boats, branches, buildings, canopy, death, distance, east, evening, glass, green, harbour, hills, horizon, hovering, impressionism, Lanzarote, life, midday, mist, morning, people, promenade, sea, streetlamp, sunset, time, trees, trunk, walking, water, west

                Puerto del Carmen

                to the east
                in the morning

                the promenade
                ended out at the

                harbour wall beacon,
                occasional impressions

                of couples made
                their way under

                irregular lamps on
                their rusting stems with

                fragile glass bulbs;
                one boat anchored

                out at sea, seemed
                closer than it was

                because the
                horizon is always indistinct;

                then, here at midday, the
                single spindle tree holds

                a canopy intricate
                of branches and peppered-green

                writhe-angled
                to the trunk through which

                storeys and balconies
                can clearly be read;

                in the evening to the
                west, the further

                hills all will hover
                for all the distance

                that bolts of mists will allow
                and for all the show of

                lowing sun will preview
                blind across the water

                                straight
                                at
                                me

 

Puerto del Carmen, a stretch, in distance, along the southern coast of Lanzarote, an elongation of time when one is there …

 

 

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

branches wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
buildings wormhole: intent
death wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
evening & morning & people wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
glass & green & sea wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
horizon & life & trees wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
mist wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
promenade wormhole: waiting to be heard
time wormhole: I
water wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796

 

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The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1870, 2018, 6*, autumn, brown, canopy, chimneys, clouds, depth, distance, growth, height, horizon, house, leaves, life, lime, Pissarro, red, roof, sun, time, trees

                there came the time
                about the red-tiled house

                when the trees had grown
                high-enough to sway away

                from roof, to loom over roof to be
                the new horizon, lime and distant,

                no branches until the canopy
                creating a depth that was

                dizzying, higher than the
                chimneys, year after year,

                under ruddy clouds and a
                brown sun between autumn leaves

 

up through the depth of The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
brown & life & lime & trees wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
clouds wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
horizon & leaves & red wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
house wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: on facing the Have
sun wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
time wormhole: London, 1809

 

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Exceat to Cuckmere Haven

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

1800s, 1930s, 2015, afternoon, attention, banjo, bass, being, blues, branches, breeze, canopy, chalk, clouds, crow, Cuckmere Haven, distance, Eastbourne, echo, elderflower, exposure, eyebrow, eyes, family, forget-me-not, future, garden, generation, grass, haiku, hair, hills, identity, jazz, karma, listening, mind, moss, music, party, river, sky, sound, stone, talking, time, trees, trumpet, voices, walking, walls, white, wind, writing

 

 

 

                                          Exceat to Cuckmere Haven

                                          enough attention to what is here all
                                          around creates event enough for all
                                          the mournful and background lines

                                          and interjections of a single head to
                                          fill and echo enough to be slightly
                                          embarrassed and self-conscious

                                                      —O¬

                                          uphill first, treeline to the left tends
                                          to the right, to the right to the left:
                                          stonewall gate; then downhill over

                                          the moss on a stone-capped wall
                                          trying blankly to describe the full
                                          and close distance of all the trees

                                          down the hill some trad jazz blues
                                          starts up somewhere from below
                                          (from someone’s garden party);

                                          upsweep of trumpet plnkplnkplnk
                                          of banjo, discussing whether saving
                                          bugs one by one from the foraged

                                          elderflower or just plonking them
                                          all in the boiling water is good for
                                          your karma or not bdjmm-dmtsh;

                                                  dry white silt track with
                                             strolling by double bass line
                                               islands of sparse grass;

                                          aggh; band stops river widens – Île
                                          de la Cité – eyes to the canopy
                                          watching the breeze listening to

                                          the fall, the bug on my forehead
                                          stops stepping between the hairs
                                          of my eyebrows – ahh; band sings

                                          out of earshot, breeze plays at the
                                          edge of the copse; must get to know
                                          these (forget-me-nots) by the fallen

                                          branch; along by the full Cuckmere
                                          ebbing back to the afternoon of the
                                          1930s, (1800s Big Country clouds to

                                          the right), in front the high sky out
                                          to the, as yet, unformed future; the
                                          different ways families talk between

                                          generations down the beach:
                                          declarative conciliatory emolliative
                                          echoing along the outflow wall

                                          crow walks awkwardly on the stones
                                          down the beach, the following
                                          wind raising its back feathers

                                                      ¬O—

                                          turning back: chalk clouds in the
                                          hillside, elderflower fronds cruise
                                          past in fleets of aligned skim

 

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: Hypnopompia
attention & wind wormhole: before // writing?
being & echo & eyes & family & identity & listening & time wormhole: my life / of others
branches & breeze wormhole: out side of the writing / lodge
clouds & garden wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
crow wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
Eastbourne wormhole: gold wedding band
haiku(esque) wormhole: ‘discution poli / d’orage …’
hair & walking wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
hills wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
mind & sound & writing wormhole: the art of sit and follow
music wormhole: “King …”
river wormhole: Totnes
sky & walls wormhole: up here
stone & voices wormhole: 1963
talking wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
trees wormhole: hot summer / morning
white wormhole: 1959

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • 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
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • 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
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

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  • 'the practice ...'
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