• 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
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    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
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    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
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  • teaching matters
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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: clock

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees

17 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

2018, 5*, alder, almond, apple, ash, beech, blossom, breeze, cherry, clock, elm, eyes, fir, fire, flame, garden, gaze, green, ground, hazel, hedge, leaves, oak, orchard, pink, shadow, silence, sky, sound, Spring, step, thought, trees, white, wood, writing, yellow

                pageant of the trees

                spring’s tonic rising
                and hazel catkins swell
                to greet the first warm days

                elm and alder to follow
                heralding beech and oak
                and later the firs will show

                their new cones, dusting
                the ground with yellow;
                the gardens will fill with

                almond blossom and
                orchards will froth with
                cherry white and apple pink,

                aperitif to coming summer;
                hedgerows become en-veiled
                in diaphanous haze, a

                million leaves on the
                passing breeze; stop
                writing, now, step out

                beneath the cavernous sky,
                deep into the quiet of a glade
                to be silent within silence,

                eyes open like shadows
                in dancing leaves and thoughts
                greener to the underside

                                                                —–

                                                gazing between sentences
                                                into the fire

                                                the beam from the
                                                old house burns clear flame,

                                                tinsel murmurings between
                                                the ticking clock,

                                                until pure white ash
                                                falls without sound

 

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 – Trees

 

 

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

blossom & breeze & fir & garden & green & hedge & oak & shadow & silence & thought & writing & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
eyes wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
leaves & pink & sky & sound & trees & white & wood wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
spring wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

18 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1967, alder, almond, amethyst, apple, armchair, beech, blossom, branches, breeze, cattle, change, cherry, children, chimney stacks, church, clock, common, cottage, economics, elm, enclosure, Essex, evening, eyes, fields, fir, fire, flame, forest, garden, gate, grass, green, hedge, Henry VIII, history, knowledge, landscape, lanes, laughter, leaves, London, Michael J Redford, mind, noise, oak, orchard, passing, past, pink, pollen, poplars, progress, red, rust, shadow, ships, silence, sitting, sky, smoke, society, speech, Spring, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, tiles, time, trees, village, walls, war, white, winter, woodland, writing, yellow

Trees

Spring’s tonic has risen within the trees and hazel catkins have swollen in greeting to the first warm days of the year.   Elm and alder are soon to follow heralding beech and oak and in a month or so the firs will show their new cones, green and full of juice, and their catkins will dust the ground yellow with pollen.   Throughout the villages cottage gardens will soon be filled with almond blossom and orchards will froth over with cherry white and apple pink spilling an aperitif to summer upon the living fields.   The hedgerows and woodlands become en-veiled by the diaphanous greenery of a million tiny leaves, an amethyst haze so tender and tenuous that I fear for its safety lest it be borne away upon the passing breeze.   I become aware of a restlessness within me that calls with increasing persistence to forego my writing and step out beneath the cavernous spring sky.   The pageant of the trees has begun.   Field and lane alike become heavy with leaf and only a section of red tile or a chimney stack, like flakes of old rust within the foliage, betray the presence of human habitation.   The blanket of summer affords us a privacy and seclusion that is unattainable in naked winter when one’s every move can be discerned by the neighbour’s critical eye, but here in the depths of summer, we can take our thoughts into the quiet of a woodland glade, we can be silent and be within silence for a little while and rest your eyes upon the shadows of the dancing leaves above.   And how restful the colour green, and how restful to the eye and through the eye to the mind that blossoms forth green thoughts.

This spring evening upon which I write is a decidedly chilly one even though the day itself has been full of warmth.   Thus I am to be found sitting in an armchair, putting my thoughts on paper, gazing between sentences into the dusty red glow of a log fire.   It is a funeral pyre really, the cremation of the last remains of an old local cottage that has long died, having fallen prey through disuse, to the vagaries of our climate and the onslaught of the village urchins.   I gaze with half closed eyes at the sawn up piece of beam that was once part of the skeleton of the old house, and see it burn with clear flame and little smoke.   In accompaniment to the ticking of the clock upon the mantle shelf I hear the old log’s tinsel murmurings that sound like a piece of screwed up silver paper, tossed aside and left slowly to expand, and as the pure white ash falls without sound, I feel myself drawn into the distant past and fancy I hear the laughter of children as they play beneath the boughs of a tree which this dead piece of wood was once a living part.   Whose children are these?   From what age do they come?   Perhaps they are the offspring of Henry VIII’s generation, the irresponsible youth of the day who cared nothing about the great cultural and religious upheaval taking place about them as they played handball between the northernmost buttresses of the old church wall.

It was at about this time when the monasteries had just been dissolved that the first enlightening book on agriculture by Fitzherbert of Norbury had just been published.   Was this historic pioneer of fertility indirectly responsible for the downfall of this old tree?   For the seas of knowledge flooded the land and split the forests into arboreal islands and many fine examples of the medieval forests became the battered flotsam of progress.

Certainly this old piece of wood never witnessed an act of enclosure, for the open field system was predominant right up until the late eighteenth century, when round and about the great open fields sprawled the commons, the scrubland and marshes, creating through their wastefulness and their infertility, a barrier to agricultural and therefore economic progress.   Although enclosure was a costly business, required finances could be supplemented by felling timber which, during the Napoleonic wars commanded a high price.   Also, in order to fence off enclosures, what was more natural than to plant more timber which, unlike normal fencing that needed constant and costly repair, increased in value as time went by.   The first choice of timber was naturally that which was most valuable such as ash and oak.   But the oak was slow in maturing, and where the ash spread its roots, no crops or grass would grow and no cattle would graze.   It was thus that the stately elm made its appearance and stamped the English hedgerow with a character all its own.   Being able to grow, and grow quickly in all types of soil, made it a very desirable timber to grow.   Also, the elm allowed grazing beneath its boughs and, due to its durability in water, it was at this time much sought after by the Navy Board for its ships.   Water mills, lock gates and drain pipes were of elm, and at the turn of the century, London alone still had over four hundred miles of mains constructed from its timbers.

Caught upon the ebb flow of time, I see the trees’ ancestral giants, the calamites, that reared two hundred feet into the sky.   They heard no child’s laughter, neither did they hear the buzz of insects nor the songs of birds, for they existed in the dim distant dawn of the carboniferous age millions of years before the birth of man, when even the birth of the first blade of grass was aeons in the offing.

They grew long, long before man, mute sentinels surveying the changing landscape, witnessing scenes that no mortal has ever gazed upon.   Then when man came, they furnished him with food, shelter and fuel; they gave to him the means of traversing the oceans.   They have been instruments of both war and peace and have featured in mans’ writing, music and art.   They have been made gods and devils and have bought good luck and bad.   Man’s long and close association with trees is evident from his desire to wander beneath the green boughs when time and toil permit, and from picnic parties who would sooner travel an extra mile to spread their chequered cloths within their shadows.   Perhaps it is because a tree expresses continuity, a security that mankind through all the ages and searched and worked for.

Although not a native of Essex, this ancient county endears itself to me more and more as time rolls slowly by, and time does pass slowly in Essex, for to plumb its highways and byways is to plumb history itself.   It has been slow to change through the centuries and there are numerous back lane hamlets which, even to this day, have experienced virtually no change for many, many years.   One lively youngster or eighty five who lives on the borders of Chignal Smealy and Chignal St. James (what delightful names are these), told me that the only difference he could see in his village was the height of the poplars at the end of his garden which, when he was only “knee high to a goose-pimple” were only a “stack an’ ‘alf ‘igh”, even the cottage gate that was propped open on one rusty hinge was the very same one his grandfather had made.

Having been one of the most heavily afforested counties in England, Essex is rich of fine examples of man’s utilisation of wood.   It can be seen in his architecture, in his tools, farm implements and vehicles.   The men of Essex are very conscious of their affinity with trees, and go to great lengths to preserve the more eminent members of their arboreal population, and I find it hard to believe that there is another county in the whole of the British Isles that can boast a greater number of ancient trees that have been propped up and strung up to cast their humbling shadows upon the heads of men.   Most of these old trees are of course oak, for Essex was noted for its oak forests, but as farming spread, so the forests disappeared, and the elms lining the fields and lanes now outnumber to oaks and are a far more familiar sight.   It is these old isolated trees that afford us a tangible link with the past.   They disperse any feeling of isolation in time and give to us instead a much needed sense of continuity, of that which has no end.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

blossom wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
branches & mind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
breeze wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
change wormhole: Bridgnorth
church wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
evening & sky & thpought wormhole: space for probing thought
eyes & passing & shadow & speech & walls wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
fir wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
green & Spring wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
hedge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
history wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
knowledge wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
leaves wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
oak wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
pink & time & white & yellow wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
red wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: despite that
sitting wormhole: getting fat in me old age
smoke wormhole: cross-section
society wormhole: raised brow
trees & war & winter wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
writing wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

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What You Are by Roger McGough

03 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

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

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

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Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2017, 7*, angel, circle, clock, doing, everything, glass, lifetimes, light, nothing, Salisbury Cathedral, speech, statue, stone, time

                Salisbury Cathedral

                angels fizz and jagger touch
                a single flame of tongue

                the oldest working clock
                shows no time anymore;

                so much empty stone
                so many lives lost

                only coloured light of lineage
                and majesty keeping inward –

                so much hopeful effort frozen
                in faraway stare outwards –

                curlicue ends of stone form
                perfect circles of nothing

                suspended in everything

 

 

there is nothing ventured that gain doesn’t think it so, there is everything gained by staying in the centre of the circle; read the whole sequence as it hangs unearthly in space: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

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

doing wormhole: nothing significant
glass wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
lifetimes wormhole: Open – All – Ours
light wormhole: darkness
speech & stone & time wormhole: stone

 

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alighted

23 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

5*, childhood, clock, cuckoo, Eglinton Hill, evening, life, time

                      of an evening
                I alighted down in the breakfast room
                      and weighed the
                metal cones on chains unequal
                      that made the
                clock cuckoo on the hour and knew
                      that there was
                something I had to do in a life

 

 

 

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

childhood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
Egliton Hill wormhole: what life went on
evening wormhole: 1967
life wormhole: 1966
time wormhole: comfy

 

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Seven A.M, 1948

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

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'scape, 1948, 2015, clock, depth, doors, Edward Hopper, letting go, light, morning, Nightmare, opening, right angle, shadow, time, trees, years

 

 

 

            Seven A.M, 1948

            too early to open,
            the shadow off the clock
            is too long

            the trees at
            the edges of nightmare
            have yet to release

            the light worries
            the door handle and would
            feign entry already

            but the
            conspiracy is deep, as
            dimension takes a right angle

 

 

 

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

doors wormhole: the open window
Edward Hopper & time & years wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
letting go wormhole: if left alone
light wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
morning wormhole: 1967
shaadow wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
trees wormhole: … the discipline of shamatha / the waft of vipashyana

 

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bougainvillea

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2014, arch, bench, bougainvillea, calm, Carol, clock, colour, cornice, dock, ferry, fish, Gran Canaria, green, plaza, returning, sill, sister, time, waiting, waves, windows

 

 

 

                                                                                 bougainvillea

                                it was the green bench
                they had agreed to meet to get the ferry back to Puerto Rico
                                              in the small plaza in Mogan
                                under the clock that doesn’t work
                                                              at ten to one

                                she waited for hours
                                              after the designated time
                different colours piped around each sill and window
                                                              all warm
                                              and the bougainvillea yet just leaf
                                                                                 twining all the archways and cornices
                                                              and the shoals of fish at the dock
                                              ever cutting alternate to quotidian wave

                                                              and caught
                                                              at last
                                the last boat home
                                the sister had already taken the next return
                a year later we returned
                                              the time was still ten to one
                                but this time bougainvillea-pretty
                                                              and calm

 

 

 

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

bench wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
Carol wormhole: hungry for a thread or two
green wormhole: ‘green plum jam on rye …’
time wormhole: the breath of London
waiting wormhole: Summertime, 1943
waves wormhole: left alone
windows wormhole: com- / mute

 

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‘anyway / is it all just / a dream?’

11 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2014, 6*, Batman, blue, buildings, clock, dream, flagpole, New York, purple, sidewalk, streets, time, traffic

                casing out an area
in NYC a small square
                                a widened sidewalk before
                                a Civic Building
                where I have my strange fights
                                of foil and counter(feit?):
                                              a street-height flagpole
                                diagonal over a bakery (historic building
                set at slight angle to the rest of the street)
                                good to get over the traffic, let’s see,
                                              a higher flagpole opposite
                                              above the clock
                                                              where I shall arrive
                                                                                 on time – HA!
                                              the perspectives are right and recede
                                                              through purple plane
                                                                                 and blue flank
                                                              I look to find the name of the streets
                                              but there are too many signs
                                                              I don’t know how to
                                                                                 pronounce them and ‘anyway
                                                                                              ‘is it all just
                                                                                                            a dream?’

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: four-colour pulp into cinematic di[gital]pix[el][live ac]tion so easily makes for semantic palava (if you read what I mean) … the foredreading of Dr Strange
blue & streets wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
buildings wormhole: glass
dream & purple wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
time wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age

 

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mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

2014, blogging, breeze, clock, doors, flower, green, identity, lamp, lemon, life, London, mauve, meaning, net curtains, offering, openness, orange, purpose, sitting room, speech, Victorian houses, white

OK my dears, because you are my blogee friends and do me the honour of wriggling through my petites ramblings where you have probably surmised that I am a weed flowering out of a piece of neglected land by a once-brightly painted wall (of a Victorian house) in sauff-eest London, I’m going to let you all into a little secret: I am a compulsive geek, a compulsive geek-weed flower.   In my solipcistic search for a bit of point amidst all the ground … I count everything.   I’m not particularly proud of it, it doesn’t really add up to much and I am starting to sit in order to make all the counting so transparent that I’ll see right through it to the purpose I was looking for all along anyway.   But on the way I have collected (almost arthritically) a bunch of data about all sorts of things which have shaped me into the paricular flowered weed that I have become (mauve-thin thorns with white tips, deepdark green leaves at the top of the stem, and small but long petals with deep lemon edges, white middle and the thinnest blood-orange corrola and spine).   I have whole lifetimes of top 10s/20s – and more? – of word and picture and tone and image, my whole culture wrapped, bagged, ticketed and stacked into a comfy armchair in a spacious and double-faceted sitting room by a standard lamp and a ticking clock somewhere, doors open, net curtains billowing.   Slighty.   Occasionally.

So.   At the end of the day (litralee – I’m not even jokinngg-ugh) I audit my day and assign MY MEASURE of how much I got out of everything I did or how well I did it.   Or not.   The measure will only make sense to me, but they are A measure of how much I have got out of them, so I will include the numbers for your comparification (if you get that far).   Not geeky enough for you?   OK, try this on for size: I started doing this counting in 1998 and still do it?   Not even bothered yet?   I audit household work, career work, what I do for my kids, what I do for my wider family, what I do for my wife, what I do in my spiritual practice and what I do for myself at the end of every day.   Yawn?   I put all my numbers onto a spreadsheet (once I figured out what spreadsheets were) and have now got ongoing averages and charts for everything I do, hear, think and eat!   Whp-p! I saw your eyes twitch then, I’m getting to you, aren’t I (I’m sorry, but I’m on a roll now).   How about, once I settled my spreadsheet: I inserted enough rows above March 1998 all the way back to 2nd November 1959.   Yes, YES: the day I was born!   Do you see; do you see what happens when you start to listen to a geek; do you see my awful power …?   And then I retroactively filled in all the data!.   Oh, whoh; phew, sheesh – what a load off my mind; if I smoked I’d be taking a long draw at the moment – hot air through the teeth, down the throat – and holding it wondering what adjective would do justice to what just happened.

Actually, I think this confession is doing far more for me than it will ever do for anyone else.   Nevertheless I will be sharing with you some of the countings I have like a toddler sharing the stickiest boiled sweet that I’d saved in my hand just for you even though I’d scoffed the rest myself.   It’s sharing, I suppose, and it’s as sincere as a 54 year old child can be.   I’ll call them “mlewisredford’s top ten _______ !” and provide my own commentary.   I’ll store them under ‘poeviews’.   So you’d better have a wet handkerchief handy, you never know when I might proffer a little fat arm upwards with large ‘lashed eyes sincerely unwavering.

Look out, now!

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

breeze & orange wormhole: wha’
doors wormhole: tired
green & London wormhole: still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city
identity wormhole: I don’t think I could do it any more
leon wormhole: the library, / you know …
life & mauve wormhole: in verse / question / m a r k ?
meaning wormhole: adversely / mistaking the finger for the moon / again
net curtains wormhole: 3:30 am
openness wormhole: practising
sitting room wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
speech wormhole: inverse superhero
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian bays / right angles and eaves
white wormhole: let

 

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9:05

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 2005, 5*, clock, combe end, conservatory, moon, night, time, writing

 

 

 

                                                                      9:05

the clock actually chimes at five minutes past the quarter-hour.   Sitting in the dark conservatory looking for a poem, I cannot find one.   I sit back and a bar of moonlight is across the page – ah, nine o’clock.

 

 

 

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

combe end wormhole: like Basho
conservatory wormhole: when things fall apart
moon & night wormholes: Let’s Go
time wormhole: grain
writing wormhole: ‘writing creatively …’

 

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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
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'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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