travel
noticing
at all is a product of
shifted perspective
related to behold;
when I’ve nothing to write
I’ve lost any perspective,
cornered by both these walls
I’ve walked along
when I die
this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration
cranes atop
pulling them further up and up
from the ground on which they
balance on receding point;
communities of them
each taller than the last and the next
all along the wharfs
of endless account
it will be expansive
high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple
kilometres long
courses of brick
grimed black and utility-studded
updown onoff foothold and wire
ripple along nicely
across right-angled centuries
and occasional shot bolts
of deepest russian vine
with no sound
save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and
believe it or not
a rainbow exponential
to the white arch of Wembley
we’ll chase for miles
orange shimmering to
magenta through staccato tides
out and over flat roofs
on and into the fields
all data wiped –
suds off my hands from my shoulders –
and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?
where trees grow from ground
shaping over decades
green-flamed cupolas
clamped to the sky
and from perspective passing
of open field
turn – creak –
the whole world
I may well
have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …
and there
Lancashire red brick
with high and whitey
sills stale and lintel
before washed-out
sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
and horizontal fingers of
scud-rain
… but they’d just
floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve
never really
made stuff happen
and didn’t have to try
more than let more and more
of stuff happening anyway
happen through me
train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
mlewisredford 