everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms

Tags

2019, 7*, Amsterdam, boats, buildings, canal, cause and effect, dome, facade, leaves, living, passing, phantom, possession, Spring, time

                everything is caused by something, which
                something is caused by something else, nothing
                stands alone where all pass as phantoms

                                from the canal boat
                                spring leaves turn before
                                centuries of storey

                                facades pass fixed
                                in blanked pageant,
                                with protruding girder

                                with which to reach-in
                                with what to stay and
                                intermittent egress

                                whose iron pins will hold
                                the sides, and only domes
                                will not turn

 

a trip through the canals of Amsterdam where the audio commentary didn’t work forcing the mute passing buildings to do the work instead; the title is from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 31

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
leaves wormhole: blue sky high
living wormhole: looking for the right exit
passing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Spring wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
time wormhole: beneath

 

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mandala offering

Tags

2019, 7*, cause and effect, doing, emptiness, eyes, giving, guidance, hands, holding, identity, interdependent origination, letting go, mandala, mountain, offering, orbit, pointing, selflessness, smile, society, water, waves, world

                not in water piled high in waves
                nor cleverly pointing

                to my own finger
                let’s just leave all that aside for the moment

                mandala offering

                but all that I let within and
                all that I give without

                without aim and with only
                slight smile and eyes

                that guides the lunge
                and holds for the whole of the fall

                flat as the palm of a hand
                deep as the highest mountain

                that the world will continue to spin
                in a palimpsest mark redford way

                and all might find their nature empty and
                centered around each orbit they make

 

                                                ___ ‘m‘ ~~~

a mandala offering is a ritual way of offering the whole universe to the Buddhas, a way of giving up everything for the sake of one’s essential goal in life; ‘is the universe mine to offer?‘ – my universe is, `bought and paid for; ‘but the universe is so big, how can you ‘offer’ it?‘ – easy, the whole of the universe is inside my head; ‘is your universe worth offering to the Buddhas?‘ – it could do with a clean up, which is why I imagine it buffed up with all the Mark Redford stuff cleared away; ‘why bother?‘ – it gives me a clean sheet with which to work on; ‘isn’t that just a bit self-indulgent?‘ – nope, self-indulgence is one of the things I hope to clean out of the universe in order to offer it, I’m hoping to invite a few friends and family around once it’s cleaned up; ‘`sounds rather limited‘ – you don’t know how many mothers I’ve got; ‘do the Buddhas want your mandala?‘ – the Buddhas are my universe, it’s just that I don’t see it yet, my damn ownership keeps getting in the way, and besides, I’m under universe-arrest at the moment … some stuff I did in the past …

                                                ___ ‘m‘ ~~~

 

 

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

doing wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
emptiness wormhole: there will be ovations
eyes wormhole: my uncomfortable life
giving wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
hands & waves wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
identity & letting go & society wormhole: in deed
smile wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
water wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877

 

so, how long is, a piece of string?

Tags

2018, 8*, anger, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, cause and effect, change, conditioned existence, doing, echo, enemy, event, existence, ghosts, identity, interaction, karma, knot, mind, others, practice, pre-existence, samsara, self-grasping, speech, talking to myself, tangle, thought, uncaused, untangling, web

                so, how long is a piece of string?

                always somehow, and ever somewhere,
                in a thousand different ways and
                a thousand different times, I set myself up,

                I set my self up
                to be the clever one, to be right in the end, and inevitably,
                like a thousand different echoes,

                someone comes and stands
                right in my way, or kneels in a ball behind me while someone else
                shoves me backwards

                so that I fall like a prat, and then someone else points
                and says ‘ha; ha’ in a thousand different ways; where
                do they all come from,

                do they just shimmer out of nowhere
                like ghosts just to frustrate me –whooo!–
                do they come out of nature,

                naturally unjust, naturally evil; are they just there
                existing from their own side, like a sharp bend in a long stretch of road
                {oh, come on,

                 no, they’d have to pre-exist in order to
                 come into existence, which would involve
                 a change in something which cannot change

                 because it is pre-existent, and therefore
                 causeless, so that it would have to stop being what it is
                 in order to be what it isn’t,

                 you know that, don’t you}; no, everything
                is conditioned, yes, and nothing stands
                independent by itself, so everything

                I have ever done or said or thought
                has been conditioned already, ok, but also,
                everything I have ever done or said

                or thought has also set up a
                whole web of further conditions
                which have had, or are nail-tapping waiting to have,

                an impact on other events
                and people; and yes, that’s ‘me’ in the corner …:
                the endless twists and turns I have made,

                and still making with every move and word and thought,
                which bind me in, tightly or loosely,
                to everything with which I interact –

                completely and utterly tangled:
                I hope I acted cleanly and carefully,
                but I’m afraid I didn’t – I’m … going to have to face my

                whole knot – a universally big ball,
                so much bigger than l’il ole me
                that it doesn’t seem to have much to do with me, but it does,
                it, all, does;

                and I’d better stop pulling and tugging away at it
                to get my own way and
                start untangling, and start untangling …

…I had a tangle of garden-wire to sort today; it had been wound round a dispenser but some of it had crossed over, become entangled, yanked, and a whole middle section had come away; then it had been worked on, to untangle it, but impatiently, and without thought, and so whole rolls of it had become furled over and through themselves, some bits were knotted, some bits were hanging out in great loops; being garden-wire, it kinked where it had been bent which also caught other strands as they came close to them in their tangle; and it had been cut for a quick solution, and so I had more than two ends that I could make any sense of; it took time untangling it, it took willing to give up on some progress I had already made on seeing that I’d started too far in, or too peripherally; it meant keeping hold of the thread I was starting with and turning the whole tangle around it, rather than working through the tangle, knowing that I was making problems for myself further down the line but I couldn’t worry about that yet; it meant having to abandon my initial thread sometimes to concentrate on further-on loops before I could return to it released; it meant I had to think ahead a bit to loosen the tangle in all the ways that it would, even if it meant unravelling the newly-wound initial thread I’d already sorted, a little; I had to take a rest every once in a while because I was concentrating too tightly …

                no, these enemies they’ve
                been ‘here’ all along, right in the
                back of my head, long forgotten,

                but from the time I crossed them
                in a thousand different ways
                and a thousand different times,

                they’ve been waiting, relentlessly,
                for a body and a circumstance to come together
                to respond:

                “there you go, mate, I owed you that”
                and inexorably I’d been setting myself up with just the right conditions
                to receive it

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 47: Impelled by my actions – [drawn out by circumstance, incited by the heat of the moment, prompted by hearsay, provoked by trigger, instigated by design, mobilised by obligation, shoved by control, summoned by role] – those who cross or hurt me, those who do me wrong just appear, right in my way and do what they have to do. And because of their actions, they will end up fallen and consigned to the infernal realms … surely, isn’t it actually me who have destroyed and damned them, haven’t I just been the mirror to magnify back to them their harm?

and, yes, that is a reference to the REM song, losing … something

 

 

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

being & mind wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
change wormhole: on facing the Have
doing & speech wormhole: ‘ouch’
echo wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
ghosts wormhole: what wounds have you got?
identity & others wormhole: there will be ovations
practice wormhole: ‘there, …’
samsara wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
talking to myself wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
thought wormhole: horizon

 

‘ouch’

Tags

2018, 6*, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, cause and effect, circular poem, doing, speech, thinking

                                         what I say and do from now on because …             … ‘ouch’,
                                                           and take a little care over                                    I am hit by a stick –
                                                                       I shall wise up                                                  I shall be angry with the stick,
                                                          ‘damn my stupidity’,                                                      ‘damn stick’ …;
                                       with cause and conditionality,                                                          but the stick by itself
                                                         my blind messing                                                                cannot hurt me,
                                                I shall become angry at                                                                it is the wielder of the stick
                                              now, for it to be enacted –                                                             that made it happen –
and it was conditioned by the right circumstances,                                                                I shall be angry with the wielder,                                
                                                              to say or do so,                                                                ‘damn wielder’ …;
                                    it was caused by my tendency                                                                but, beforehand,
                                               wasn’t just spontaneous,                                                               the wielder of the stick was
                                                    but what I said or did                                                              not my attacker,
                                               ‘damn what I said or did’ …;                                                        he was prompted by his anger,
                             I shall be angry at what I said or did,                                                        the anger made him wield the stick –
                                                                         I said or did –                                                 I shall be angry at the anger,
                                               it was prompted by something                                      ‘damn his anger’ …;
                                                                         erupt from nowhere,                      but his anger didn’t

 

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 41: Although the immediate cause of the blows and injury I receive is delivered by the stick yet I do not take this into account but, rather, become angry at the wielder of the stick, my aggressor, my attacker. But then, as the attacker, likewise, is wielded under the influence of anger, if I really must get angry, it would be more fitting for me to rise and become angry at the anger instead.

 

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

circular poem wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
doing & speech wormhole: the reach turned to love
thinking wormhole: ‘there, …’

 

on facing the Have

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

‘… 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

 

the balance necessary between

Tags

2017, 7*, appearance, balance, being, cause and effect, checking, coagulation, denial, doing, empty, fortune, healing, holding onto, karma, legacy, life, lifetimes, lunge, morning, path, Refuge, relationship, room, self-grasping, shutters, statue, trauma, true nature, urge

in my corner of the room
                I have only just noticed the shutters ajar –
                                wondering if I dare push them further apart –

the dynamics of past lifetimes
                rebirths of exact measure to the traumas
                                round which they coagulate; but then, also, the

healing of relationships
                which tip towards fortune however
                                you make them, the balance necessary between doing

all that holding and checking
                of all those causes and effects which
                                comb-through the tangles of legacy but which

can so-easily become the
                local point of selfish, and being
                                insight through the skein of appearences into

their respective empty
                nature enabling them all to
                                appear in the first place which can so-easily

become a stoney denial
                of causality into one’s own statue
                                stuck in pose; the path through which neither

aggravates nor heals;
                the practice of Refuge in the
                                morning and at the urge to lunge of all

my doings, alongside
                all the other 6-fingered and 4-
                                thumbed sisters of this world

 

this teetered out of a comment made in response to one of Jana H. White’s posts, but I’ve been all the way through her site and can’t find it – she must have taken it down: it would make sense of the ‘corner of the room’ and the ‘6-fingered and 4-thumbed’ references, but, maybe, if you tune out a little, it works nonetheless…

 

 

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

balance wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
being & doing wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
life & lifetimes wormhole: amniotic avenue
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
path wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell

 

no / thing

Tags

2013, 5*, cause and effect, circular poem, creativity, emptiness, interdependent origination, writing

                  all be
             lets it
         that                            there
   thing                                   is no
the no                                     thing
     cept                                    that
  else ex                                 is not
         thing                          con
            every                   nec
                               ted to

 

 

 

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

circular poem wormhole: breathing
creativity wormhole: the // orange rose
emptiness wormhole: breathing out
writing wormhole: redundant

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment

Tags

2016, 8*, above, air, below, black, breathing, breeze, brown, bull, calf, cause and effect, curtains, dream, earth, east, echo, elm, emptiness, energy, evening, eyes, field, green, grey, head, horizon, Jupiter, leaves, logic, Michael J Redford, moment, momentum, moon, morning, mother, night, nightjar, noise, owl, pattern, purple, questions, quiet, rebirth, roads, shadow, silence, silver, sound, space, stars, thought, time, twilight, ultimate reality, valley, walking, whispers, white

                moment

                when the day is done and the green is brown
                and shadow is the deeper purple, and when
                the earth gives up its warmth to the stars, I
                walked one evening, direction of Jupiter to the
                darkening east, while the nightjar echoed empty fields

                I stood where smaller noises become: dusk
                to night, the tethered bull, the calf’s raised head,
                the creaking elms, whispers above, stems below,
                depths of space; silence; was it Selene within
                the lap of dusk or the white barn owl, that

                blackened or, then, silver-plated, the night
                with a quietude that freed me from the tired eyes
                of day to reverie while the planet turned; morning –
                it is half past five when I start the milking,
                I arrive beforehand with the spaciousness of valley

                where breezes end and leaves are still and
                no longer conscious of breath and vale; a thought
                is born, from one come two, coruscating within
                seconds, each one nearer to the vertex of
                ultimate truth; the stars in their patterns

                out of time; questions asked and answered at
                accelerating rate, brutal logic ceding to the
                preceding cause – reversal of effect; but the pace
                is too much, I flounder and sink as I lose
                momentum; but I have brushed the grey curtain

                aside and my cup runneth over as the Left hand
                lifts the veil on the eastern horizon we are reborn
                with the stripling day; no energy lost, just changed;
                the air is scented green along the unused road,
                within a mother’s arms again

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

 

 

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

air & black & evening & time & white wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
breathing & sound wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
breeze & brown & curtains & field & green & grey & horizon & leaves & moon & mother & night & purple & quiet & silence & silver & space & stars & thought wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
dream wormhole: bavardage
echo wormhole: constant hummm
emptiness wormhole: more than effigy
eyes & shadow wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
morning wormhole: one day / in 1956
roads wormhole: tired
twilight wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
walking wormhole: with endless love

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

Tags

1967, 3*, air, answers, beauty, being, bells, black, breath, breeze, brown, bull, cause and effect, childhood, clarity, clouds, cows, curtains, dancing, dawn, dew, doing, dusk, earth, east, Einstein, elm, energy, evening, field, freedom, grass, green, grey, heat, hedge, hills, horizon, identity, Jupiter, leaves, life, light, logic, meadow, mind, moment, months, moon, morning, mother, mouse, nature, night, nightjar, noise, openness, order, owl, questions, quiet, rabbit, rebirth, scarlet, September, silence, silhouette, silver, sky, slow, space, stars, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, truth, ultimate reality, uncle, universe, valley, velvet, white, wind, wings, woodland, words

A Precious Moment

As after the heat of a summer’s day the face glows in the mildness of evening, so the face of the countryside glows in the mildness of early autumn.   The summer months have infused the merest suggestion of brown in the deepening green of the foliage and the face of the earth gives up its warmth to the stars above to see them dance.   It was into this calm that I walked one late September’s eve.   The evening star cast her unblinking eye across the heavenly dome to Jupiter in the darkening east and the nightjar echoed its song above the empty fields.   I stood at the end of the stack-yard and returned the disinterested gaze of a cow in the field beyond.

It is during these slow hours when the pace of the day has declined, that the smaller noises of the land become apparent.   The bull, who was tethered a full two hundred yards away in the next field could be heard to rattle his chain and blow down his nose at a particularly juicy clump of grass he has found.   Behind me in the ‘maternity’ box, a freshly calved heifer mooed huskily yet very softly as its offspring raised its head suddenly at a strange sound.   Perhaps it was the sound of ancient timbers creaking under the weight of centuries, or that of the leaves above whispering to the bowed stems in the hay meadow below.   Or maybe it was the very silence that enshrouded these small sounds that attracted its attention, for silence is so startling in its rarity and its beauty.   Dusk gave way to night and I became aware of the immense depths of space, the dizzy height of the mackerel sky, and although it was the clouds that moved, it seemed they were stationary against the clear black silhouettes of the elms and that it was the motion of the gibbous moon behind the clouds that alternately blackened and silver-plated the night.   Even at the tender and romantic age of sixteen I was aware of this quietude, and in one enlightened moment jotted down these few words on an old envelope:

         Soft, soft, the bell that tolls the evensong
         Across full summer’s empty fields serene.
         And slowly draws the scarlet cloak, the hem’s
         Black velvet, diamond specked, communes me with
         The white barn owl, who with his noiseless wings
         Doth glide and swoop upon the luckless mouse.
         Selene set within the lap of dusk
         Transmutes the living green to silver plate,
         Enshrouds my world with immobility.
         And with a quietude that frees the mind
         Of bondage from the peering eyes of day,
         I fain become the earth, the sky, the all.

But it wasn’t until my late teens that I realised there are two times during the twenty four hour cycle when such a quietude exists. One is just before the dusk and the other just before dawn.   Although both seem to be divisions between day and night, the prelude to dawn seems to me to be the more startling and more satisfying to experience.   In the evening the mind is released into a reverie bound by personal conscious thought, but during the morning pause one experiences a freedom and profundity of thought that is rarely to be found in any other part of time.

It is barely half past five in the morning when I start milking, but often I arrive at the cowshed half an hour before in order to experience this precious moment.   Although at this hour the ‘Stone that puts the stars to flight’ has yet to be flung, I can sense the great spaciousness of the valley before me.   Again the trees move softly and the long grass in the hay meadow sifts the breath of night, and I wait.   I wait for that incorporeal beauty that is the union of soul and nature.   It begins where the breezes end and the rustling leaves are stilled.   A serene stillness envelopes the woods and meadows and even I am not conscious of breathing.   I am drawn into the quietude and become part of it; become part of the very earth on which I stand; part of the universe through which I move.   I have become part of each blade of grass in the valley before me, part of every hill.   I feel myself part of the earth, feel its very movement through space.   Unfortunately mere words can no longer be the conveyance of the emotions involved (and I use the word ‘emotions’ for want of a better noun) for they become so expansive and so personal.   No longer can mere words impress the reader’s soul with such profundity of emotion that this experience releases within me.   Each must go his own way, search alone and experience it first hand and with an open mind.

A thought is born and from that thought comes two more.   The two are made four and the four made eight, a self-multiplying chain reaction of thoughts has been set in motion that flows with great haste through the mind; in fact a torrent of thoughts in one brief second, and yet each one is startlingly clear and leads the mind one step nearer the truth.   The heavenly dome is vast above the valley and the stars, thrown into their mythological patterns by the great cosmic hand, impress their presence on the mind with unusual brilliance and time is no more.   Now the mental hosts are converging, and step by step I am racing towards that vertex which is the ultimate truth.   The questions are being answered at an ever increasing rate, the startling, brutal logic disclosing the result of a preceding reaction which itself, reveals a cause.   So through to the highest plane the mind soars upon an ever accelerating reversal of the law of causation. But the pace is too much.   The mind flags and begins to flounder.   At this juncture the mind can be likened to a water skier who, while the pace is kept up skims along the surface in the sun, but immediately he slows down he begins to sink, until at length he finds himself floundering with no forward movement.   Now the mind has become weak and cannot comprehend the unfathomable thought.   But I have brushed the grey curtain; I have seen a light faint though it may be and both my physical and spiritual selves have been revitalised and my cup runneth over.

For most of our lives we are lost beings out of tune with life around us.   Only during such precious moments as these do we fit into the great harmonious chord; all things round and above have their special place in it, from the fat brown rabbit throbbing in the cornfields to the fleecy pieces of golden cloud that sail upon the pale green skies of dusk.   Worries, anxieties, tensions, all are reduced to their proper size in relation to life, and as the imperceptible ‘Left hand of dawn’ lifts the veil on the eastern horizon, we are cleansed and reborn with the stripling day.

It is only during such periods that nature can be reduced to anything approaching order, and that there is an order I am in no doubt.   Einstein’s inquiring mind was working on the universal equation when the workings of that very same equation stilled his physical being; perhaps now he has solved it, we in this life never shall.   The perpetual motion of nature is the perfect machine and we are part of that machine.   It is complete within itself, recreating its own new parts from the debris of the old.   No energy is wasted or lost, just charged in form.   Nature permits us a marginal tolerance within which we may make one or two adjustments to suit our needs and requirements, but beyond this we dare not go for we merely create more problems than we solve.

         So does she pass, the gentle night,
         Slow seeps the dawn upon the scene.
         Dew sparkling in the first light of
         The new day shows where she has been.
         The eyes of day now open on
         The dewy sward and gossamer
         Bows low beneath its pearly load,
         And hedgerows faintly scent the air
         With green along the unused road.
         And I am born once more and see
         The day as I once first beheld –
         A child within his mother’s arms,
         Another, within its mother’s arms.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & field & morning wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
beauty wormhole: the policies came to nothing
being wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
black & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
breath wormhole: inbreath
breeze wormhole: and that’s where I are
brown wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
childhood wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: reaching branch
evening & silhouette wormhole: tired
green & space & uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
grey & horizon wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
hedge & hills & life & light wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: with endless love
leaves & mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
moon wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
night & silence & sky wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
openness wormhole: ‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27
quiet wormhole: Jericho
silver wormhole: Jon
thought & time wormhole: inbreath
white wormhole: mauve
words wormhole: bloogying