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

mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: community

cool / tiled flooring

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2017, 3*, architecture, community, daylight, Rome, rooftops, shadow, tiles

                Italianate roof-edge
                apportion eternal daylight
                in quotidian segments
                between nightfalls
                all along the community

                why don’t they fill
                that space between the
                window and the ceiling
                with something – cool
                tiled flooring

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: sreet
rooftops wormhole: breakfast
shadow wormhole: amniotic avenue

 

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the quiet whale

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2013, 8*, air, breath, community, currents, echo, groundlessness, life, light, passing, quiet, silence, society, sound, speech, superhero, water, whale, windows

                there was a thirty year cacophony
                     storied and canyon
                     full of echo and window
                     and impossible superheroes
                but the giant fin e – ven – tu – all – y
                     passed gliding out of freeze-frame
                     the quiet whale drifting off
                                like a community

                                there is nothing left
                     the after-currents, the dwindling tendency
                     the receding cheers the gears the home-lights
                                                receding bobs
                                                no ground to
                                                stand from
                                                su – spend – ead

                                     but too
                     no need to hold my breath anymore
                                no need to stay submerged down here
                                                let this leaden air out
                                                to rise where
                                                it will
                                I will take in all water
                                                behind my ears
                                                               and reach anywhere
                                                                               through power
                                                                                                   of silent speech

 

 

 

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

air & passing wormhole: too greedy
breath wormhole: municipal garden
echo wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
groundlessness wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
life wormhole: step
light & society wormhole: Infantino / district of Gotham
quiet wormhole: slow enough / to have love
silence wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
sound wormhole: where else
speech wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
superhero wormhole: bud
water wormhole: embodying
whale wormhole: gulp // spout // and recede
windows wormhole: to rescue something

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

cars, celebration, city, community, commuting, countryside, evening, eyes, field, harvest, history, industry, life, Longfellow, Michael J Redford, morning, Nag's Head, pipe, pub, Ramsden Heath, smoke, speech, sun, table, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, tv, village, walking, wheat, windows, work

Safe Home

“Drift from the land continues.”   Thus was I informed by the ‘Farmer’s Weekly’ one Friday morning as it lay open on the breakfast table.   This drift from the land affects not only agriculture but also the structure of the village community.   Of those who leave the land, many also leave the village their forefathers had inhabited for generations and go to the towns to find employment in industry, and of those who stay, most become commuters and spend most of their lives working in and travelling to and from the city.   It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to find the Coopers or the Charmans, the Thatchers or the Reeves whose descendants had practised their crafts in the same village for centuries, and I am saddened at the thought of these links, these direct human links with the past slowly withering away.   Of the hosts who patronise my own local pub, there are but five or six who are connected in some way with farming or country life.   The normal topics of conversation (apart from the usual British subjects of cricket and the weather) are now the trials and tribulations of a day at the office, the trouble one has had with the car or the recently installed central heating system and a somewhat heated discussion on ‘That’ programme on telly last night.

The truly rural community is not only dwindling but is also being diluted by the absorption of the townsman in the form of new towns and from the expanding ring of the more prosperous classes as they move out further and further from their place of work as life in the city becomes more and more intolerable.

A small but interesting side effect of this movement of the population can be noted not only in the topic of conversation, but also in the mode of dress.   At one time it was only the more prosperous members of the community who could afford smart suits of fine materials and were able to drive around in ostentatious cars while the remainder had to make do with serge or rough tweed or any hard wearing material which could weather many winters.   Now, prosperity has increased to such a degree that, on a Saturday evening, the car park of the Nag’s Head is full of shining cars none of which I swear is over five years old, while inside silk rubs shoulders with worsted.   What is left of the local gentry now distinguishes itself by arriving at the pub in a battered Land Rover covered in muck and mud and dressing in rough tweeds and cords, and if it were not for his public school accent, he could quite easily be mistaken for a tramp.   You will find him mostly in the public bar playing dominoes or cribbage and drinking pints of bitter while his city cousins monopolise the saloon discussing the affairs of the day over a scotch and dry.   No matter how affluent the society or how adamant is one’s denial of the existence of ‘class’, the differences will always be there to be seen.

Nag's Head

One such a tramp visited me yesterday to confirm some arrangements with regard to the harvest festival.   He was a man of my grandfather’s generation who had lived in the village in pre-dilution days.   The common bond of farming had drawn us together when I first visited the Nag’s Head in Ramsden Heath, and ever since we have discussed, gesticulated and argued about farming, I, learning something from his methods and he (I am vain enough to assume) learning something from mine.   So it was that two tramps (and I call myself a tramp simply because I had not yet changed from my working clothes, not because I make claim to being part of the local heritage) sat at an open window one late summer’s eve discussing and reminiscing about the harvest.   The heat of the day had left its mark upon the still air and golden rays slanted through the window picking out the curling smoke from my friend’s pipe before it disappeared into the gloom above.   His eyes ascended with the smoke and his thoughts went with them.

“`Course it’s not the same now – never will be, harvest has lost most of its true meaning.   Today it has become merely another chore that has to be dealt with.”

I thought of the congregation that would attend the little grey church on Sunday.   Ninety percent of them would be townsmen whose only connection with harvest is the bread roll eaten at their game of bridge.   My friend was speaking again.

“Nowadays the only people conscious of harvest home are those who reap it and of those few involved, only a fraction are aware of the full solemnity of the occasion.”

That’s true.   In the days of scythes and flails, even up to the time of the threshing machine, harvest time, that milestone of true country life, was steep in ceremony.   First a ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ of the harvest would be elected to lead the reapers into the field.   This was a solemn occasion for the sweat, toil and the blistering work was still ahead of them.   The long days of drudgery passed slowly as acre by acre the long stems fell to the scythe and backs bent continually cutting, gathering, binding and stooking.   Finally, upon the last day and in the center of the last acre stood the last sheaf.   If one man was to reap this final sheaf alone, he would be courting disaster.   The entire company therefore, would gather round and, at a signal form the ‘Lord’ or the ‘Lady’ (depending upon local custom), they would all hurl their hooks at the few remaining stems.   The corn dolly would then be woven to appease the spirits, then the back slapping and the chasing and kissing of the girls would begin.   More merriment would take place that evening when the whole company would assemble at the farmhouse for refreshment in the form of rough (very rough) cider and ale.

When the crop was fit for carrying and the last load had been carted in from the fields led by the ‘Lady’ of the harvest, then would come the harvest supper with its eating, drinking, toasting and singing, and soon after, the gleaning bell would ring out across the still fields.

There is always a stillness in the fields when harvest is over and yesterday was no exception.   There was such a calm in fact, that as the old gentleman opposite me knocked out his pipe on the window sill, our Jersey heifer Molly, who lay half asleep on the other side of the hoppit, turned her brown face lazily in our direction.   Nowadays there is no ceremony.   Like most milestones, harvest has been enveloped in the growth of progress and forgotten.   The old man spoke again.

“Of course harvest was of greater significance in those days, for if harvest was poor, hardship and deprivation would be the farmworker’s constant companion throughout the year, that’s why there was such joy and genuine thanksgiving when the crop was safe home.”

I received a mental picture of a field heavy with ripened wheat, the hard fat grains shimmering in the heat of summer and gold sheathed stems, faint bowed by heavy heads, stood as if they themselves were in prayer.   Then I saw beneath this deeply moving scene, the reality of sweat and toil, of aching backs, parched throats and calloused hands.   And yet the workers could still infuse a gaiety into the drudgery; even at the end of the last long day, they still had energy to laugh and sing and chase the girls across the fields.   Although there is still much hard work to be done at harvest time, the worker’s nagging fear of a crop failure is gone; the direct contact between harvester and Mother Earth has been severed and much of the toil has disappeared – but then so has much of the gaiety.

My old friend stood up and stretched.

“Even if it was a bad harvest,” he said glancing at his watch, (it was two hours past opening time), “there would always be a sheaf put to one side for the festival, partly as thanksgiving for that already received, no matter how little this might be, and partly as a prayer for the future.”

I took down my leather-bound jacket from the back door and thought of Longfellow’s words: ‘Like flames upon the alter shine the sheaves,’ flames that took a year to kindle, a year of energy which, if funnelled into a second, could move a mountain.

Strolling towards the Nag’s Head in the cool, green evening, my face stinging from the noon day sun, I suddenly remembered something.

“By the way,” I said, “what exactly was it you came to see me about?”

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

cars wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
city wormhole: tired
evening wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
eyes & speech wormhole: coagulating
field & sun wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
history wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
life wormhole: chartless …
morning & walking wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
Ramsden Heath wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly
smoke wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
table wormhole: what life went on
talking wormhole: my seat // now
tv wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
windows wormhole: the purple mist between
work wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – mmpph’

 

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my life / of others

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, Allen Ginsberg, allowing, America, awkward, being, bittersweet, breathing, community, decades, desert, doing, echo, eyes, family, fog, giving, gravity, horizon, identity, inclusion, ink, life, lifetimes, listening, loneliness, love, management, marble, mauve, meaning, others, planet, pointlessness, purpose, radiation, relationship, secret, silence, sitting, society, talking to myself, time, twilight

 

y’know; sometimes you’ve just got to have a rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me, pathetic, awkward (don’t forget the ‘awkward’), poor-me whiiine to realise just how rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me-ie, pathetic, and awkward you can be; sigh – but there’s still some poetry in it, so I’ll share the self-pity about (caution: this is quite a high-pitched whiiine; it is strongly urged that you wear ear-protection – or at least stick your fingers in your ear reciting la-la-la – if you undertake to read this; you have been warned)

 

 

                my life
                                of others

                                how long has this been going on
                how long this has been going on

demands in their eyes pull me to them like a planet
                pull on me to contain them
                                pull deep in me through the latest casual orbit

                                I give because I can
                learnt silently over decades
                                              I have lived to allow ever wider
                                in order to include
                                              to neutralise my gravity in order to listen
                and let them breathe enough
                                              to find their own solution –
decades of leaning a hundred awkward ways
                                              to be with others
                                decades of privately finding ways
                to re-collect my own gravity –
                                                              shiny marbles with petrified ink –
                                              and decades having to let them go
                                                              one by one
                                              tearfully
                                eventually

                                              all under the great broad horizon
                                lost before the hills on the great broad horizon
                the beautiful-twilight mauve desert
                                              and the radiation presence of another close planet they
                cannot do the same for me
                                                              they will not do the same for me:

                                the squalls and foreclosures,
                                              they are of my own making
                an audience extends only so far as to conclude that it is all my own awkwardness – all I have to do is fit –
                                              before I have even finished explaining
                usually I don’t bother to finish
                                or even start
                                              the solution is ready-made
                                                              (with a few ‘hmm’s to make it look kindly)
                or just kept to themself
                                echoing loudly behind their eyes

                                              like sharing secrets with the fog
                                                              I find myself alone
                each one of them was the last person I could turn to in the world
                                but they all uncannily agree with each other
                                              they are the Company Man

                                I have done my bit for the family
                                I have done my bit for the team
                                I have done my bit for the community
                                                              all by not being there
                                              all by not getting in the way
                I cried when I was acknowledged once
                                                                                 it never happened again

                                I suppose
                                it’s just
                                              they need to keep from shattering in a thousand pieces
                they need to hold the whole damn thing together
so I give because I can
                                because it is right
                                                              but cannot expect return
                                                              they cannot give
                                                              what they expect
                                                              in return
                                for sure things are done things may be organised
                                                              (sometimes even when I want them)
                                              but for some greater good
                                                              for some greater career
                                                              for some greater legacy
                                                                                 not mine
                                              certainly not mine (‘America I have given you all
                                                              and now I am nothing’)

                                              when I work it is all about them
                when I stop it is all about how they performed
                                all that I do and don’t do
                                              is how it sits as support or burden
                                                              to them
                                conclusion: it is only them who do the work
                                              the thinking the organising
                                                              I seem to do nothing
                                                              really
                and do it annoyingly and awkwardly and thinkingly – roll of eyes – I
                                have to be managed to be of any competence
                                              (that’s meant affectionately) I
                                              am just the recipient of their
                                                              good work
                                                              (what do they call them these days – ‘clients’)
                                              my value
                                              my contribution
                                              what I am
                                                              are the price I pay to receive

                so I don’t say anything much – what’s the point?
                                I’ll put a few things out
                                              tentatively
                                (where I might be patronised at best – if I’m lucky,
                                                                                 if the planets are lined up right)
                                                              told it’s cute
                                              or individual
                                or much too clever to understand
                or it’s not what was needed
                                              or sorry, Mark, did you say something
                                                              and the audience will move deftly on
                                to what it wanted to talk about anyway
                or what it wanted to be doing
                                              all along

                                I mostly keep it to myself
                                                              here
                                              in the place I claim
                                              each day – time to myself bittersweet
                                                              (at siege from service and compliance)
                to ‘indulge’ myself ‘stay up too late’ ‘contemplate my navel’
                                                              otherwise I get ‘grumpy’
                                              I talk to
                                              myself
                                                              I am not the Company Man
                                                                                 no one
                                                                                 to share
                                                                                 me with
                no one beyond the managed obliged corporate return
                                              oh yes I return to myself
                                                              find my own meaningpurposeaudiencelove
                                              safe in the fifty year relationship
                                which is good for only one

                                decades whittled away
                                              here and there
                                                              chips and shavings on the floor
                                leaving a petrified face
                eyes wide mouth open
                                              bas-relief out from being

 

 

 

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

Allen Ginsberg & giving wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
allowing & loneliness wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
being & breathing & sitting wormhole: the art of sit and follow
doing & identity wormhole: my beauty
echo wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
eyes & time wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
family wormhole: sometimes
fog homework: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
horizon wormhole: To my Mum
life & love wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
lifetimes & others & pointlessness & society wormhole: Totnes
listening wormhole: before // writing?
management wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
mauve wormhole: ‘green post …’
meaning & talking to myself wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
twilight wormhole: the four whores of the apocalypse

 

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… Mark; remember …

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

pages coagulating like yogurt

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

recent leaks …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'in my car I pass...'
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky

category sky

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tag skyline

'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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