Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in

Tags

1967, 2016, 8*, abundance, ageing, autumn, birthday, blackberries, branches, brown, change, childhood, climbing, clouds, cows, earth, elm, field, gate, ghosts, gold, grey, hedge, ivy, lark, leaves, legs, life, listening, memory, mist, path, red, rook, rose-hips, running, seagull, shadow, signpost, silence, singing, sky, skyline, society, trees, wind, yellow

            there are great mountains of cumulus
            towered above, shadows course over
            grey-yellow stubble, gulls hackle rooks
            in leaning elms while red and black-

            berries hang in the hedgerow … run,
            run downhill, stretch my legs in boundless
            stride, stream through the air from boy
            to man, flood the plain with open memory;

            or maybe: scale a furtive upward glance,
            through boughs of avenue, a third
            dimension, to survey, to just survey all
            the song of all to sing ‘laaaaaark’; but

            I’ll just rest here, now, sit beside the gate
            sit under the signpost, and listen … foliage
            turned dark and almost brown, the earth
            awaits the golden plough while dancing

            rose-hips watch skeins of Friesians
            work meticulous across the skyline and
            … everything will change, piped rippled
            through bygone years – there will be ghosts

            in the ditches, there will be paths adrift
            of leaf, the ivy will reach up from the post
            which points only to the wind now leaving
            autumn mists to drift like webs into the

            corners of paddocks; and there is a strange
            silence in the sky … as the new town marches in

 

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

 

 

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

autumn & branches & brown & change & childhood & clouds & field & grey & hedge & leaves & life & mist & path & red & seagull & silence & sky & skyline & trees & wind & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
ghosts wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
gold wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
listening wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
shadow wormhole: the purple mist between
society wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times

Tags

1967, 3*, air, autumn, blackberries, blackbird, branches, brown, change, chestnut tree, childhood, climbing, clouds, cottage, countryside, cows, echo, elm, Essex, field, grass, green, grey, hawthorne, hedge, hill, ivy, lark, leaves, life, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, oak, path, red, RF Hilder, rook, running, seagull, signpost, silence, singing, sitting, sky, skyline, snake, summer, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, tits, trees, vista, walking, wind, woodland, work, yellow

A Sign of the Times

Things are changing around us all the time and when one lives with and through these changes it can be very difficult to tell when they occur.   Changes are more evident and in many cases more startling when one returns to a scene of bygone years, and this has never been made more clear to me than now as I sit beside a signpost in an Essex lane.   It is a contrast so shocking that it has left me quite numb, and it is difficult to understand how not only the facial character, but also the spiritual character of the countryside can be altered beyond recognition.

Some five years ago, I holidayed with friends who lived in south east Essex.   One morning I crossed the meadow at the rear of the cottage and entered Ten Acres which sloped gently to the woods below.   The full heat of the summer had abated to the mildness of early autumn and great mountains of cumulous, creamy topped, towered above me, their shadows coursing silently over the yellow-grey stubble.   Two glistening sea gulls above the oaks did verbal battle with a colony of rooks quarrelling in the elms and, far above, it seemed a thousand larks were singing.   Blackberries, some bright red others over-ripe and heavy with juice, shaded themselves in the hedgerow, and beside a weathered bale of straw, forgotten perhaps or left too wet for carting, a grass snake basked in the sun.

Gazing down the green slope, there came within me a sudden desire to run, to stretch my legs in great leaping strides, to see the hedgerows flash by in a blur and to feel the mild air stream about me.   I wanted to race the wind that went tumbling down the hill to the woods below.   Twenty years earlier the desire would have been satiated without further thought, but time passes and the unconscious brakes of inhibition condemn these simple pleasures to the memory’s store.   For one brief second I was a young boy again about to satisfy a desire, but then all too soon, I was a man again, and grown men are not expected to behave in such a manner.   To see a child walking along the road in an orderly fashion one moment and then break into a mad gallop the next is an occurrence accepted without question, but many an eyebrow would be raised if I were to do such a thing now.   Such are the many simple pleasures we must perforce leave aside as we grow up.   There are of course many other pleasures which take their place, but even so the illogical, spontaneous desires of childhood every so often burst within the heart and flood the mind with memories.

I had reached the wood and was a boy once more.   Gazing above, I felt a sudden desire to reach up and haul myself into the green branches.   One can climb a tree a hundred times and go up and come down a hundred different ways.   I think perhaps it is the additional dimension which gives tree climbing that extra fascination, for if one explores an area of ground, one has but two dimensions to contend with, but up here in a green swaying arbour, one has a third.   In the fullness of summer, high up in the sycamores and the chestnuts, there are green caverns to explore, and the diverging paths that disappear into the foliage above lure one on to the very top where, in green shrouded secrecy, one can survey the surrounding terrain.

To me, and no doubt to a large number of other adults, these things still hold a fascination and most of us are able to fulfil these old desires in one way or another.   It may be by toying with model railways or messing about in boats; it may be by dressing for the local amateur dramatics or taking part in a sport.   On the other hand, it may be by casting a furtive glance over the shoulder and climbing a tree.

After walking for an hour or so, I came upon a signpost beside an open gate and, finally bowing to the truth that I am no longer a boy, I sat beside the gate to rest my weary legs.   The foliage of the countryside had turned a very dark green, almost brown in fact, heralding an early autumn.   The grass between the drills of faded stubble would not grow much higher now.   It had been an early year altogether and quite a large number of farmers had managed a second cut of hay.   Now the harvest was done and the good earth awaited the plough and the frost.   Hawthorn berries were an abundant red across the headland and a distant skein of Friesians grazed their way slowly across the skyline above.   A tit leapt across my view and into a thicket close by and made the shiny red rose-hips dance.   All around was the gentle yet positive movement of life.   It was something to be not only seen, but felt.   Little did I realise then how all this was to be changed.

Now five years have passed and I am once more beside the signpost, but this year the summer has been short.   Already the trees are bare and possess that clipped appearance of a Hilder autumnal study.   The tall grasses in the leafless hedgerows bend stiffly beneath the chilly winds which have been noticeable this past month.   Gone is the suppleness in their sway, gone is the living green from their stems.   Soon a wintry gale will snap and blow them into the ditches to join the ghosts of previous years.   The lanes are filled with dead leaves, but no longer do they echo with the laughter of children as they wade knee deep through them, for nobody comes this way now.   The gate hangs askew on its rusty hinges and needs to be lifted and torn from the coarse grasses which grasp the bottom rail.   Such action however, is not necessary, for although the signpost once read ‘Public Footpath’, no one walks this way now.   The letters are illegible and covered with green lichen, and around its rotting base a small ivy begins to reach for the sky.   The footpath which ran diagonally across the field is no longer to be seen, not that this matters either, for the tiny lane bears no traveller save that of the drifting mists of autumn.

(R.F. Hilder (1905 – 1993), an English marine and landscape artist and book illustrator).

I gazed at the signpost and thought of the sweat that went into the making of it.   Strong backs bent to dig the hole, strong arms lifted the stout wooden post.   A craftsman’s eye morticed in the sign that is as square today as it ever was.   The painted letters have peeled and left but a ghost on the woodwork.   It doesn’t matter anyway, for no one passes this way now.   But it used to lead somewhere.   For someone the sign pointed to journey’s end; once cows scratched their necks upon it and children used it as a target for throwing pebbles.   But now it merely points to the wind.   There is a strange silence in the sky.   No rooks, gulls or larks can I hear; no animals rustling in the hedgerows.   Never have I witnessed such an empty land, a land so void of life and feeling.   Although the wind is cold upon my neck, I cannot hear it in the trees and the dead leaves, sodden from the wandering mists, make no sound as they fling themselves at my boots.   The ditches have filled with rotted vegetation and the water has spread.   Marsh grasses and wild flock have appeared for a brief spell of life.   And brief it will be, for six months from now, the new town will be born.

                Once I worked among green hills
                And as I worked I sang, oh yes
                I sang mid the trees, in echoing woods
                And o’er the dewy fields.

                I sang with the rising lark, whose voice
                Cascaded from above,
                I sang always a joyous song
                Of those things that I love.

                My orchestra came from the wind,
                From trickling brooks and rustling leaves,
                From earth below and all about,
                E’en heaven’s lofty eaves.

                But now my green hills lay beneath
                A glaring concrete face
                And where once sang the blackbird’s heart,
                Ten thousand people pace.

                So now accompaniment have I none,
                Nor reason for to sing.
                My heart they buried ‘neath the stone
                When marched the new town in.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & branches & seagull wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
autumn & hedge & leaves & trees & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
blackbird & childhood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing
brown & grey & path & red & silence & yellow wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
change wormhole: reaching branch
clouds & sitting wormhole: and smile / like a bud
echo wormhole: fresh destiny
field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
green & sky wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
life & mist & time wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
oak wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
skyline wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
walking wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
work wormhole: travel

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs

Tags

'scape, 1967, air, autumn, beauty, beech, blue, branches, breeze, brown, butterfly, child, clouds, countryside, cows, echo, eyes, field, finches, friends, green, hedge, hill, horizon, lark, leaf, leaves, life, meadow, Michael J Redford, morning, mouse, October, orange, parents, red, sea, seagull, sky, solitude, South Downs, space, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, trees, village, walking, white, wind, windows, yellow

While staying with some friends at their South Downs home one autumn, I espied their six year old son Simon making off across the meadow at the foot of the hill.   Having been asked to keep an eye on their offspring while they went into town, I took up my walking stick and opened the back door.   As I stepped into the sun, I recalled those beautiful hours many years ago when I first walked the slippery grass of the Downs alone and first became aware of their warmth and their beauty.   For this reason I remained at a discreet distance and kept well out of sight, not wishing to intrude upon the boy’s apparent solitude.   I relived those distant moments with this young child, wondering if his thoughts were parallel with mine.

It was a mid October morning, one of those rare mornings when each distant leaf and twig is etched with startling clarity against the pure motionless air.   A faint haze of cloud occupied the northern sky, yet immediately above, the heavens were of such a blue that, even as he gazed, young Simon’s eyes ached at the brilliance of it.

The hedgerows were beginning to thin a little so that he could just make out the faded stubble beyond.   Haw berries were in profusion and were difficult to distinguish from the leaves, many of which had turned a deep russet brown.   He climbed to the brow of the hill, crossed to the stile in the far corner of the meadow and paused.   This was the furthest he had ever been by himself.   He knew this meadow fairly well for he could see it from his bedroom window.   This is where the big brown cows file slowly by in the drowsy summer afternoons and where, if you are lucky, you can see the rabbits scurrying about in the hollow down by the thicket.

He turned and peered over the stile into a new land, a land of sharp prickly stubble and straw bales stacked in towers across the field like an army marching down upon the red roofed village below.   A cloud of finches rose from the ground, as if the boy’s sweeping gaze was of material substance, touching the birds and startling them from their gleaning.   The land sloped gently away to the village and there levelled out to the broad patchwork weald cradled within the gentle curve of the downs upon which he stood.

Never had the young boy seen such a view, its beauty being enriched by his apparent solitude.   Here, high upon the downs, he was a giant surveying his kingdom and strode the browning fields to the horizon counting them as he went.   He came to love the scene dearly as the years went by, often returning later in life to relax in the spaciousness of it; to release his mind, his very soul, to soar high above, around and within and become part of this spacious beauty.

He clambered over the stile and made his way along the headland.   He liked walking upon stubble because it crackled and popped beneath his feet and trapped air burst forth from the hollow stems.   The day seemed a little warmer now and somewhere high above, a lark sprinkled the field with song.   Then a rustling in the hedgerow close by brought Simon’s gaze to rest upon the tiniest mouse he had ever seen.   It was the little creature’s white waistcoat that gave him away, for his yellow-orange jacket blended so with the coloured leaves about him, yet, even as he looked, the twinkling eyes and quivering nose disappeared.   He dropped to his knees and squinted between the leaves.   One leaf in particular caught his eye.   It was noticeable by the fact that one side of the central rib was of a deep chocolate brown colour while the other side remained green, and on the underside of the brown half each tiny artery and vein was etched clearly in red.   Plucking the leaf, the boy rolled over onto his back and looked up through the overhang of the hedge and on up through the branches of a great beech tree to the sky beyond.

At the zenith the azure had deepened and was of great and wonderful contrast to the coloured leaves about him.   He was conscious of the great depth above him yet lifted his arms to touch it, his fingers tracing the graceful boughs above.   And there, framed within his outstretched arms, within that riot of dazzling colour, he became aware of life, all life, from the very earth upon which he lay to the cosmic depths his fingertips caressed.   He became aware of its vitality, its beauty and its warmth.   And the young boy gazed in awe and wondered.

He loved the countryside and the old cottage where he lived with his kindly parents and he looked forward to the walks and picnics they took together.   But here was a new experience.   For the first time in his young life, Simon was away from home and alone.   The great hill and reared itself between him and the little cottage cutting off all visual contact with things familiar.   Suddenly, it was as if the countryside belonged to him, it became as intimate and close as his own loving parents.   As he gazed above with half closed eyes, the blue sky poured down its warmth upon him; the mild breeze lifted his fair hair and tickled his forehead and the Red Admiral butterfly danced for him and him alone.   This was indeed his land.   He rolled over and hugged the earth close to him, clutching handfuls of dried leaves.   Tomorrow he would discover a new land beyond the shoulder of the downs and perhaps one day he would even reach that distant ring of trees.   But not now, for there was a touch of urgency in the falling leaves and the echo of a gull circling far out above the sea, filtered through the wind to tell him it was time he was on his way.   So, with a twig of deep red leaves for his mother’s vase clasped tightly in his small fist, the boy arose and turned once more to the hill.

How sad thought I, is the cry of a gull, or was it merely the mood I was in that made it appear so, for echoes of the past, no matter how happy, are always tinted with sadness.   Following the young explorer I thought up these few lines:

                Hark to the seagull’s urgent cry
                Which faster leaps than body flies,
                Leaps from the soul, bounds o’er the tree –
                Crowned beasts alone above the sea.
                Then down upon the ewe-cropped sward,
                Through rabbit’s hollow, shaded run,
                Along the white and winding track
                And up once more into the sun.
                And on the salty wind that sighs,
                The fading cry looks o’er the sea
                To see its birthplace glistening white
                And wheeling, circling, ever free.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & blue & eyes & green & sky wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
autumn wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – autumn
beauty wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
branches & leaves wormhole: Is There / Life on Mars? – poewieview #32
breeze & clouds & horizon & trees wormhole: carpet worn / to the backing – poewieview #30
brown & space wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
child wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
echo & field & thought wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – from arm to nature, doing nothing
hedge & morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly
life wormhole: even / a second
orange wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – the soft canticle of the gourds:
red & walking wormhole: my seat // now
sea wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
seagull wormhole: the missing chord // the now-silent seagull
sun wormhole: trellis / and wisteria – poewieview #29
white wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
windows wormhole: magnetic field
yellow wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly

Tags

1967, accent, age, beer, chrysanthemums, eyes, hedge, hospital, meadow, Michael J Redford, money, morning, name, pipe, portrait, pub, Ramsden Heath, smell, speech, Sunday, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, village, woodland, words, work, writing

 

Olly

I’ve never found out how he came to be called Olly for his real name is Alfred.   When I first met him he was about sixty years old, short and thin with a face like an old walnut and eyes as wicked as a ferret’s.   There’s an old country rhyme which goes:

            I can drive a plough an’ I can milk a cow,
            I can reap and sow an’ thatch an’ mow,
            I’m fresh as the daisy as lives on the ‘ill
            An’ they calls Oi Buttercup Joe.

This was Olly.   He could do all this and more.   It was a known fact in the village that if there was a job to be done that nobody would not or could not tackle, the cry was ‘Give Olly an oller’ and, in his own sweet time he would appear and ‘set to’.   He would never be seen to hurry, yet the task was always completed in good time.   No doubt every village has a character of Olly’s kind tucked somewhere beneath its roofs and also no doubt, many boring people like myself who are only too eager to interrupt his work and spend a pleasant half hour gossiping over a pipe of herbal.   He grew his own tobacco, a variety of herbs which was as smooth as silk and with a nose as sweet as fresh made hay, and it was for this reason that one could smell Olly approaching long before you could see him.

Depending upon the topic of conversation his accent would be either amusing or confusing, for it was a long slow drawl peculiar to north Essex.   I remember once while passing the time of day with him, he asked if I was going anywhere near the post office.   I replied that I was.

“Well then, I wonder if yewd take some kines down for me.   Tell Mrs. Sharman they’re from me an’ she’ll give yew some noots”.

Although I hadn’t a clue as to what he was talking about, I agreed to his request and he disappeared into his cottage.   A minute later he was back holding a little blue bag knotted tightly at the top with a piece of binder twine.   Not wishing to appear inquisitive or ignorant I accepted the mysterious bundle without comment and bade him good morning.   At the post office, Mrs. Sharman recognised the little blue bag even before I spoke.   She untied the neck and emptied onto the counter a pile of threepenny pieces.   The ‘kines’ then were coins and the ‘noots’ were the three one pound notes given to me in exchange.

Olly was a man of few words and rarely spoke unless spoken to first, even his greeting was more often than not a nod of the head.   To a stranger, I suppose he would appear unsociable, but to those who knew him he could be both amusing and interesting, and one who would always give a hand when help was needed.   Tuesday evenings at the Crown was our regular shove ha’penny meet.   There was Joyce, a middle aged soul of forceful character who kept pigs, Phil, a delightful lady who worked for the Milk Marketing Board, and of course, Olly and myself.   It was the custom that losers paid for a round of drinks and as we all drank bitter, this did not make for a costly evening.   On one particular occasion both Olly and I and our opponents needed one peg apiece to win.

“Better set they drinks up now,” said Olly to Joyce as he crossed to the board.

A sneer of mock contempt appeared on her face.

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous,” she snapped, “you want one in the top bed and I only want one in the bottom.”

Olly polished the halfpenny on his corduroys and, eyeing the tip of his highly polished boot replied,

“I dersay that could be arranged.”

It is a regular pleasure of mine to close my eyes to the garden and the various household chores which inevitably accumulate in a writer’s home, and wend my way on a Sunday morning slowly across the home meadows to the woods below.   When I wander thus, I am constantly picking pieces of the countryside and chewing them.   Sometimes it will be a handful of wheat, sometimes haw leaves or berries, plantain, blackberries or just plain grass – according to season or mood.   On one such occasion I had teamed up with Olly and was thoughtlessly plucking nettle tips and chewing them.   Mistaking his look of pity for one of alarm, I reassured him that the tips of the leaves contained no stings and were quite harmless.

“Ar that’s as maybe,” he said in a knowing voice, “but you’ll jump when it comes out the other end and stings yer arse.”

Nobody could ever do a job as well as Olly.   Mind you, he would never say so in as many words, but after talking with him for ten minutes one would come away with such an impression.   In most cases of course this was true.   If a job was worth doing at all, Olly would do it and do it well, but if for example, my chrysanthemums were five feet tall, his would be six, or if I had bought a bargain for five pounds he would be able to buy the same thing for fifty shillings.   I had recently finished erecting a new fence between my garden and Joyce’s pigs.   The posts were upright, the wire taught as a fiddle string and the strainers set firm.   In fact the whole job had cost me two blistered hands, a strained back, a gallon of sweat and almost as much beer.   I stood back admiring my handiwork and asked Olly, who had ambled across the hoppit with his little spotted dog, what he thought of it.   He stood for a while sucking at his pipe, then, poking the corner post with his stick he conceded:

“Be alright if the wind don’t get up.”

Speaking of the wind reminds me of the time when Olly was taken to hospital.   It was one mid-summer’s weekend when I realised that I hadn’t seen Olly all week.   My inquiries revealed that he had been ‘took in’ for a hernia operation.   When I eventually found time to visit him he was laying in bed swathed in bandages, his eyes brighter and his weather beaten arms darker than ever against the white linen.   Apart from a little discomfort he was enjoying himself immensely.   The ward was comfortable, the food good, and the nurses ‘marvlus’.   He has but one complaint and this came to light when a young nurse arrived at the bedside with a strip of tablets.

“Gawdamighty not more,” he exclaimed and, turning to me he said:

“Y’know, they’ve loaded me with so many pills that if anyone ‘appens to pass when oi farts oi shall kill ‘em.”

The nurse, dodging a backhander from him as she passed, said simply:

“He’s improving.”

He was eventually discharged from hospital and was laying a hedge the very next day.   “Can’t abide sittin’ about all day doin’ nothin’.   And so he progressed from strength to strength to this very day, when he ‘put in’ more hours than people care to think about.

It seems impossible that characters like this should ever pass into oblivion, in fact I’m convinced that some day in the dim, distant future, he will be teaching my great, great grandchildren the art of shove ha’penny in the middle bar of the Crown.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
hedge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
money wormhole: listen willya
morning & smell & work wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
Ramsdn Heath wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
speech wormhole: what life went on
Sunday wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
time wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
words wormhole: substance
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – from arm to nature, doing nothing

 

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
silver wormhole: Jon
thought & time wormhole: inbreath
white wormhole: mauve
words wormhole: bloogying

 

tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair

Tags

2015, bay window, Crowborough, economics, emptiness, eyes, haiku, hair, hands, Have, hedge, Herbert Road, hills, Hillside, history, horizon, hotel, house, humanity, life, London, rooftops, Shooters Hill, sight, society, tag cloud poem, terrace, Thames, time

                                                     haiku   is awkward

   the more that is left in

     like uncombed  hair

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                            the hands that Have   are

 
                                                    small and gnarly that hedge a                
                                                        fund and close their eyes;

 
                                                my sight formed along
                                          rooflines of Herbert Road edged
                                                           above the distant hills

 
                                beyond the river
from terraced steppes along the
     declining line of

 
                                                      Shooters Hill; but then

                  my sights folded inwards at

                                                                   Hillside, pages of

 
                                                              turned history that had

                                lost its own horizon, from

                                                                                                            hotel to house in

 
                              the bay windows of
                              London where humanity
                                                                              is stuck in all time

 

‘aitches’ touch on quite a few boat-ties to my past: ‘Herbert Road’ was the local shopping high street where I lived in London until I was 19; it is in Plumstead which spreads south over the crest of ‘Shooters Hill’ and merges into Woolwich down to the river Thames; ‘Hillside’ is one of a little cluster of houses where I settled to raise a family and grow a career in Crowborough in the late 1980s – that same 80s that, mean-and-all-the-while, Thatcher was creaking open that casket (‘can’t read the label – “–ora’s Box”?’) which left me alien to my own background and lost in my own riverbank mist, save for the miraculous peek of haiku and the deadened gaze of bay window …

`haven’t published a tag cloud poem in a while: they’re made up of the larger tags of my work built up over the years – this one emerged into a series of haiku[esque] pieces of work – almost inevitably; this one was particularly difficult to form, the tag-words didn’t run off each other smoothly – I must admit I left a few words out; the green links are to those respective tags, the different sized fonts determined by the number of ‘topics’ that pertain to that tab … nerk!

 

 

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

Crowborough wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
economics wormhole: 1959
emptiness wormhole: need
eyes wormhole: bavardage
haiku[esque] wormhole: ‘green plum jam on rye …’
hair wormhole: impressionism
hands & humanity wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Have wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
hedge wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
Herbert Road wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
hills wormhole: life [‘n’ death] / legerdemain – poewieview #15
Hillside wormhole: Charlotte
history & horizon wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
hotel wormhole: Hotel Room, 1931
house wormhole: first Spring storm
life & society wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
London & rooftops & Thames wormhole: up on the hill
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
time wormhole: 1968

 

where the goblins leered – poewieview #14

Tags

1969, 2016, bedroom, blue, Bowie, echo, glass, goblins, grey, hedge, hills, love, muddy, pillow, poplar, red, seeing, tangerine, time, white, windows

                                pillows and empty poplars
                                is all can be said now of the

                                tangerine red that hedged
                                through the rows and mud

                                ruts were nascent to the
                                ploy of reaching brows

                                where the same grey-blues
                                that ever seeped through

                                the cold sash window and
                                echoed about the high white

                                covings, were seen again
                                where the goblins leered

 

grown through hedge of Letter to Hermione, 1969 and brow of An Occasional Dream, 1969

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

bedroom wormhole: 1963
blue & white wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
Bowie & echo & love wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
glass & hedge & windows wormhole: keep the light off
grey wormhole: thick thick fog
hills wormhole: walking through Lewes
red wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
seeing wormhole: teached / in the ass
time wormhole: strange / tarnish

 

keep the light off

Tags

2013, awareness, field, glass, hedge, light, looking, mineral, movement, net curtains, outside, rain, rooftops, shadow, silhouette, society, suburbia, true nature, wind, windows

 

 

 

                                keep the light off

                part the net curtains
                                out through the window … stop
                                and look and
                                              really look
                                the shaggy silhouettes
                                high to the left long to the right
                                              bristle and lean
                                awhile the drives and avenues of rooftops
                                extend like fields and hedgerows hideously
                                              all accepting the rain (running down the glass)
                                              to reveal their two-tone

                                                                                    mineral nature

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: thick thick fog
field wormhole: the continental stride of trains
glass & rain & wind & windows wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
hedge & shadow wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
light wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
looking & society wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
net curtains wormhole: south horizon
rooftops wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11
silhouette wormhole: Soir Bleu, 1914

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

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

brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

the continental stride of trains

Tags

'scape, 2013, Belgium, blue, clouds, continent, field, gods, hedge, landscape, passing, power, sky, speed, sun, train, travelling, trees, wind, wind turbines, wires

 

 

 

                                          the continental stride of trains

                                          in the time to traverse the wide field
                                          at 125 mph; one   two   almost three

                                          great turns of the titan blades sending
                                          wires elegaic across the land all tucked

                                          with tree and hedge before the god-
                                          clouds stacked high to low and hovering

                                          impossibly in the blue blue sky with wind-
                                          sculpted indifference and power of sun

 

 

 

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

blue & train wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
clouds wormhole: Sunday afternoon
field & hedge & passing & travelling wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
power wormhole: The Godfather III: // AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …
sky wormhole: three musicians
sun wormhole: along
trees wormhole: Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23
wind wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921