the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes

Tags

2022, 20th century, 8*, afternoon, banshee, blood, blue, brown, capitalism, Carol, childhood, dream, eyes, faces, fields, garden, gold, growing, history, landscape, life, maelstrom, measure, mist, object, objectification, orange, plane, production, sapphire, sky, sound, space, storm, summer, sweet, time, whorl, World War I

                                                the inevitable tock

                        this queasy land
                        life out of time, this dreamscape
                        with waist-high mist

and then a uni-prop dhrined straight across the sky one endless summer gardenoon

                        made a whorl
                        brown and bloody fields
                        and jar-sweet marmalade

                        wherein history appeared
                        as proliferated objects
                        space now only a measure

                        the face appears
                        in the eye of the storm
                        tarnished blue and palsy

                        measuring gossamer gold
                        between always-contestable markers
                        from an impossible sapphire cap

                        only retrospectively glimpsed now
                        as screaming banshees
                        back in the maelstrom

when we close our eyes

time by Carol Redford; used with permission – thank you

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

20th century wormhole: the reach turned to love
afternoon & Carol & garden & sky & time wormhole: time
blue & gold & life wormhole: Journey
brown & capitalism wormhole: travel // when I die
childhood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
dream wormhole: Candaka
eyes wormhole: Four Noble Truths
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
fields wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
history wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
mist wormhole: taking birth
orange wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sound wormhole: long / road
space wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
storm wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
summer wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

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time

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

‘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

‘don’t look at it …’

Tags

2019, 4*, Amsterdam, boats, Carol, crane, eating, grandchildren, harbour, orange, pink, retirement, sky, sun, talking

                don’t look at it
                but the sun is
                sherbet orange

                so we eat our
                meals, and shared
                and wondered

                about future
                grandchildren
                until the sky

                behind cranes
                and masts was
                pink sugar-ice

 

 

 

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

Carol wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019
crane wormhole: travelling / back
orange wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: the old man;
retirement wormhole: Renunciation
sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
sun wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
talking wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

Valentine’s Day 2019

Tags

2019, 5*, beach, Carol, circular poem, Lanzarote, love, painting, paper, sand, sea, shoes, Valentine's Day, walking, water, waves

 

 

 

 

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

beach wormhole: allowed all gain
Carol wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
circular poem wormhole: ‘ouch’
love wormhole: in deed
sea wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
walking wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
water & waves wormhole: mandala offering

 

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

Tags

2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white

                … and yet I think I am so modest:
                      I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,

                      all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
                all the Big Issues I generously buy

                all the time given to Carol and the kids,
                      to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,

                      all the insights from comics and books, I think I
                know what’s what; I stand colossal

                      on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
                than the ants that circle across it,

                so much more, even, than the cat
                      that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand

                      human to the height of all achievement; all of this
                I have already destroyed

                      a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
                with even the most slight

                      annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
                the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed

                teeth and howls; when this dent,
                      this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from

                this axe from some other side) that
                      holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,

                      everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
                and isolated; I won’t

                      become human again for so long I’ll need
                another, far-future,

                flash of lightning
                      in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll

                ever get another chance
                      to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s

                ease out all these creases, let’s
                      polish all that chrome, before evening comes again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses

 

 

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

beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach

 

we held cold hands

Tags

2018, 6*, acquamarine, airport, bardo, beach, buoy, Carol, clouds, cold, electric, engine, glasses, grey, hands, holiday, horizon, Lanzarote, love, Morecambe, morning, pink, planes, sea, sky, sound, streets, sunset, time, volcano, walking, waves, white

                we walked by the airport with tinted glasses
                flights coming in going out while the

                sun set behind; without tripping
                the waves lapped and swashed as they do

                but broke electric white and fetched
                electric aquamarine all along under

                the gauzy pink and far horizon
                while jet engines cracked their power and

                streets of new villas hung like morning belts
                of cloud before the still-dormant volcanoes;

                finding noway round an air port
                we about-turned to vainly chase the sun

                down; the sea, now, met the sky
                in bardos of grey and buoy, the belts

                of cloud had turned electic, the planes
                taxi’d twice their size before take off and

                we held cold hands through it all
                like first we did in Morecambe decades ago

 

see also: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations for the prenouement

 

 

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

beach & sea wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
Carol wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds & glasses & hands & love & morning & time & waves wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey & sky wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
holiday & white wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
horizon wormhole: mauve
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
sound & streets wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
sunset wormhole: that
walking wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

 

`whappn’d!

Tags

2018, 5*, being, books, cafe, cake, capitalism, Carol, clothes, living, love, marriage, sponge, stone, water

                                `whappn’d!

                over bakewell tart and
                carrot cake in the garden shop
                café: what we got now …

                we shed our clothes and
                books and find that capitalism no
                longer works; the stone

                will also exhude mineral
                when wet with water from
                the slightly squeezed sponge

 

on 25th August 1981, Carol and Mark got married in a registry office – in, signed, out within 15 minutes; 37 years later found them in their local garden shop cafe on Ashdown Forest looking at each other across the table … he had been like a stone giving little that was needed, she was like a sponge taking all that was available and still dry …

 

 

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

being & love wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
books wormhole: lost the search
capitalism wormhole: growth
Carol wormhole: … the underleaves show
living wormhole: cowled
stone wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
water wormhole: transferring

 

… the underleaves show

Tags

2017, 7*, black, brick, Carol, crank, faces, glasses, grey, hair, Ironbridge, leaves, mirror, progress, purple, railtrack, reading, steam, sunglasses, table, thrust, time, trees, Victorian, walls, wind, windows, wood

                greased and black teeth interlock
                in turn from steam built to release

                to crank the thrust trained to track
                sooner ahead and curving to distant

                future while bricks stack high to
                shape an echoey wall up to 1000 a

                day, coal-faced and sullen and bolts
                sunk into wood that will never be

                undone again all the while
                the wind blows the upper trees …

                                — O —

                bottom of the tall mirror above
                the wooden table tops the back

                of handsome hair let grey with
                sunglasses and purple glasses on

                the end of her nose reading
                something carefully before the

                five-high-four-wide-flank-of
                paned windows all along the front of the Refreshment Pavilion and

                when the wind blows high
                … the underleaves show

 

Blists Hill is a delightfully recreated Victorian industrial town near Ironbridge, Shropshire which tags itself ‘The Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ we revisited in May 2017

 

 

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

black & purple wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Carol & hair wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
faces wormhole: sharpened apex
glasses wormhole: Batgirl –
grey wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
leaves wormhole: travelling // arrival
mirror wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
reading & wind wormhole: perspective
table wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
time wormhole: Bridgnorth
trees & windows & wood wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
walls wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye

 

Sheffield Park Gardens

Tags

2016, 9*, air, black, blue, bluebells, branches, Buddha, Carol, children, contemplation, copper beech, creation, daffodil, dandelions, discovery, duck, eyebrow, face, family, fields, flag, future, garden, gem, girls, glance, green, hair, Have, humanity, India, kalpa, lake, land, life, limbs, living, mauve, May, name, passing, petals, plants, pollen, primrose, promise, rhododendron, seeing, serendipity, settlement, shade, Sheffield Park Gardens, sitting, society, stone-chat, talking to myself, transluscency, tribe, voices, walking, water, yellow

                Sheffield Park Gardens

                we walked
                upright
                across wide fields

                in scattered groups,
                family and tribe,
                private longing

                under shaded
                brim for a land
                of silk and money

                8th May 2016, with

                only childrens’ voices
                we walked into
                the garden

                dispersing to
                our hides to make our own
                discoveries

                by happenstance
                and peripheral glance
                held cold and fresh

                before name:
                that stone-chat
                that makes the

                copper beech
                transluscent;
                the cool stretch of branch

                yet to bud
                before the haze
                of dusty pollen;

                what to make
                of the solitary dandelion –
                butter yellow life –

                amid
                fain clusters of primrose; and
                there in the shade,

                mauve-bells and
                daffodil stalks make in-
                visible a steely blue;

                bluebells
                like raised eyebrows, relaxèd
                to see a future;

adult voices pass, now, talking ways of life; young girls practise handstands and routines in the fields;                

                let’s sit by the lake awhile:
                where a duck’s
                head

                sits
                just out the shade of exotic plants
                (let’s say, from India)

                the water lapping
                anywhere (let’s say, oh,
                 two thousand

                 five hundred
                 years ago), tucked
                immaculate

                black
                letting nothing out
                but the feint

                of blue
                or green that will form a gem
                in kalpas

                of contemplation;
                across the water a willow rests
                like a flag

                (girl’s hair
                 recovers from each upswing from each
                 hand-stand);

                turning home
                Carol stooped
                to smell the rhododendron flower

                “oh, …”

                pushed her face
                into the petals with lust
                was it

                because I’d
                said the branches
                were an orgy of slippy limbs

                or was it just me
                making things up
                as we walked along?

 

I know, I know, it’s mid February, and the poem was written and set in a May; it’s not seasonally right, but this was the next in line to be printed: them’s the chops …

 

 

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

air wormhole: Batgirl –
black & blue & Carol & passing wormhole: travelling // arrival
branches & voices wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
Buddha wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
family wormhole: out
garden wormhole: slightly / uphill
green wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
hair wormhole: two profiles
Have wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
life wormhole: sweet chestnut
living wormhole: ‘still …’
mauve wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
seeing wormhole: glide
sitting wormhole: amid
society wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
talking to myself wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
walking wormhole: loss
water wormhole: without any buffet at all
yellow wormhole: greedy