‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’

Tags

2019, 6*, air, balcony, bamboo, blue, breeze, clouds, cream, doors, facade, grey, height, history, pastel, pink, sweet-pea, Totnes, vertical, white, windows

                from the cathedral window two stories
                high above town

                the eiderdown cloud has settled
                patchwork greys

                (and pastels blue
                 through the pulled-back door to the

                 balcony); there
                and here, the various facades all cream

                and white, but
                the haphazard verticals of the sweet-pea

                crane pink
                with-out the bamboo spine

                exercising constant flexed ligament to the air
                but not the breeze

 

still in Totnes; ‘stories’ are definitely … sic

 

 

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

air wormhole: psssssh
blue & grey wormhole: travelling,
breeze wormhole: on / that / day
clouds wormhole: travel // when I die
doors & windows wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
history wormhole: despite all / depiction
pink wormhole: riders of the night
white wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

Tags

'scape, 1967, 5*, Atlantic, birdsong, birth, black, blackbird, blue, branches, brick, countryside, death, echo, elm, eyes, fields, flower, garden, green, Greenwich, grey, hate, hills, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, May, Michael J Redford, morning, pastel, pigs, pink, rain, red, rhythm, school, silence, sky, snow, sound, sparrows, stillness, summer, sun, swifts, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, vertical, village, walls, white, wind, windows, winter, woodland, world, yellow

Snow

There is a great expectancy in waiting for the snow to begin.   Sometimes the snow comes with the wind when the trees are flailing and the Ruddock ruffles his breath beneath the trembling ivy.   Then, the contours of the land become accentuated, blackened on the leeward side to eye-shocking contrast to the whiteness on each other.   Each iron furrow stands in stark relief, a symbol of winter’s Herculean grip.   And where the skimming flakes have hurled themselves upon the wooded hills, each twig upon every branch, each branch upon every tree, hugs close a spectral image and hazel coppices become an abstraction of diverging verticals.

Sometimes however, the snow comes upon us unheralded; its approach is silent; no movement is seen among the fields or felt upon the cheek.   Somewhere below, the dormouse sleeps, and as the sparrow waits in the hedge I find myself walking with reverent steps as if, when in a house of worship, one feels the presence of the graven saints.   Eventually I must pause in my tracks, feeling guilty of the very movement of my limbs when all else is still; and in the greyness of the sky there is but the faintest suggestion of pink.   On a woodland bank the adventurous lesser periwinkle displays a solitary blue flower and from the old red-brick garden wall of the big house on the hill, the ivy casts down a leaf that slips rhythmically from side to side like the baton of the music teacher in the village school below.   The leaf touches the ground and a snowflake touches the cheek.   The eye is directed from the sky to the black background of the woods and a million flakes are seen; a million pieces of perfection yet each one different to the other.   In the classroom below thirty pairs of wide eyes turn to the window and the rising undercurrent of excitement is checked by the teacher’s baton.   I would indeed be guilty of a grave hypocrisy if I were to say that only young hearts flutter with excitement at this particular moment, for I too have never outgrown my love for the snow and look forward to the white, silent world to come.

Of course, snow brings with it its hardships as do the frosts, the winds and the rains.   They bring discomfort and sometimes death to the aged, the sick and to the wildlife about us.   But then so do the searing hot summers that parch the earth and lay heavy upon the fevered brow.   Always there is something inimical to or destructive of life, yet at the same time and in many cases because of it, life is somehow strengthened.   I remember how uneasy I once felt when harrowing a field of oats for the very first time.   The teeth of the harrow clawed at the tender green shoots, breaking and bruising them, threatening to tear them bodily from the soil.   Had I misunderstood my employer’s instructions? Was this really what he wanted me to do?   And yet two months later, despite its apparent destruction, there stood before me a field of rippling, luscious green.   If we were to hate all things that displayed an ugly side, there would be nothing left in the world to love.

This morning the window panes were covered with acanthus and the sun was a flat yellow disc that could be viewed without hurt to the eye.   The mist seemed to smooth the scene into a two dimensional pasteboard picture which gave the impression that I could reach out and touch the pastel blue hills across the valley.   I donned an additional thick-knitted woollen jersey, pulled on my gumboots and gloves and stepped from the warm steamy kitchen into the sparkling garden.   The brilliance and frostiness of the air sent the blood racing to my cheeks and my ears began to tingle.   In the piggery at the bottom of the garden, a mother sow with her nine three week old piglets were taking the air.   The little ‘piggles’ as they were sometimes called in this area, were racing around with their snouts down, like little pink snow ploughs forging furrows in the frost encrusted snow.   As I approached, their heads jerked up and, like tiny pink statues, they eyed me for a brief second before turning on their heels and hurtling across the piggery barking (or were they laughing) at the morning sun.   The impression of nudity that young piglets must give must be seen to be believed, and the sight of these nude little bodies coursing through the snow set me shivering.   I once heard of a sow who, in preference to the warm, dry sty supplied by her human master, built her nest in the corner of a field, and nothing on earth would induce her to return to the comfort of the ‘maternity’ ward.   Early the following, bitterly cold, morning, she was found burrowed deeply within her nest with an army of piglets lined up at the milk bar with the most ridiculous expressions of contentment upon their faces.   Not ten feet distant, a robin alighted on the solid water of the cattle trough and proclaimed the good news to the world.

However, it was too cold to stand watching the antics of these endearing little creatures (I dare not think of the hours wasted in this way during the warmer days) so I entered the lane that led to the fields.   The dull klunk klunk of axe striking wood came to my ears and I saw through a gap in the snow-bound hedge the rhythmic rise and fall of my neighbour’s arm as he stooped over a pile of logs.   The sound bounced across the fields to the woods and back again with such clarity, that I half expected the echo to continue as he laid his axe aside.   He saw me, nodded at me and said, “Morning”.   I nodded at him.   “Morning”.

The countryman has an almost psycho-analytic method of extracting information from the unwary traveller.   By a few pointed remarks or statements he finds out all he wants to know without having asked a single question.   Having lived in the countryside for half my life, I have developed to a lesser degree the same technique.   I did verbal battle with him for five minutes but my defences began to crumble when he said, “Better watch that plank over the stream, bound to be slippery with all that frost on it.”

“I expect it is,” I said, “Still, the tread of these boots is almost new.”

Now he knew where I was going, for the plank in question bridged the stream that ran along the north side of the woods.

“Surprising how much longer it takes to get across country when there’s frost and snow about.”   He peered at me from the corners of his eyes.   “Best get a move on or else you’ll be late.”

I gave in.

“That’s true, but then I’m only out for a stroll.”

Questioning my sanity, he returned to his chopping and I to my walk.

It has often been said by the townsman (although having spent most of my childhood in the grimy streets of Greenwich I no longer regard myself as a townsman) that the countryside is ‘all very well’ in summer, but ‘muddy, dismal and uninteresting’ in winter.   Muddy it may well be, but it is clean mud, untainted by diesel oil, slime and soot.   As for being dismal, are they so blind they cannot see the beauty in a curtain of falling rain brushing the distant hills, or hear the music of a million drops of water among the shining leaves or smell the fragrance of freshly dampened earth?   Can they not see the beauty that I see now, of glistening white lacework of the frosted elms against a crystal clear sky, and undulating fields of virgin snow, pure and smooth, a countenance of innocence that has yet to bear the mark of man’s impropriety?

In the days of winter when the hedgerows are empty and the ditches and river banks laid bare, one can discover more easily the badger’s sett or the otter’s holt.   One is able to make a mental note of where the blackbird is likely to build his nest; perhaps the disused nest of a song thrush now exposed by the skeletal hedge will eventually house the spotted white eggs of the blue tit in the warm days of May to come.   Close scrutiny of tree and bush will reveal a host of living green buds wrapped tightly in their protective coats; life is expanding beneath the frozen ground, straining to burst forth, and even as the blackbird sings, the lambs are falling.   The countryside in winter is not dead; there is life, vibrant and pulsing as the blood in one’s veins.   It is all around, above one’s head and below one’s feet.   It is not winter that dispels life, but life that dispels winter.   The immigrant swift brings with it the warm southern winds and life throughout the land erupts, forcing the icy blasts, the snows and the frosts into the North Atlantic.   And after all, without winter, there would be no spring.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

black & talking wormhole: returning home handsome
blackbird & echo & fields wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
blue & rain & sky wormhole: the too big moon
branches & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
death & white wormhole: the 19th century
eyes & morning & sun wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
garden wormhole: what life went on
green & grey & life & red & silence & walls & windows wormhole: did I get old?
hills wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
kitchen & school wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
love & sound wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
pink wormhole: languidly close the portal
snow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
sparrows wormhole: tired
stillness wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
trees wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
valley wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
winter wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
world wormhole: let it all go
yellow wormhole: magnificent salad

 

currency of generations

Tags

2012, buttons, childhood, clothes, colour, cupboard, echo, Eglinton Hill, family, generation, history, identity, lifetimes, living room, marble, marshmallow, morning, Mum, muse, pastel, sound, speech, stairs, taste, tin, transparent

 

 

 

                                currency of generations

                                ‘fetch the tin of buttons’
                                a quest to the cupboard
                                by the stairwell just outside
                                the room we dressed in
                                and spent all morning
                                because it was warm
                                ‘the one with the fruits’
                                different sorts of fruit
                                pastel-coloured and
                                marshmallowy on a tin
                                ‘they’re petit-fours’
                                something to understand
                                later (the taste had been sugary
                                and pasty and although
                                it looked like fruit it stuck
                                in my throat) now has
                                buttons which are cool
                                and swirly when I run
                                my finger through them
                                and marbled-enough
                                to see history and boiled-
                                sweet transparent-enough
                                to see worlds themed in
                                colour and echo from the clothes
                                of real people from family aunts
                                and uncles in the past who
                                I never knew or can’t remember
                                the lineage from which I came
                                contained under tin-bent lid

 

 

0.62

 

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

childhood & Eglinton Hill & morning wormhole: between thoughts
echo & stairs wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
family & lifetimes & sound & speech wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
history wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
identity wormhole: too late:
living room wormhole: fine
Mum wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
muse wormhole: and that’s where I are

 

earthed

Tags

2013, Ashdown Forest, being, clouds, drifting, earth, grass, grey, pastel, silver, smell, sunlight, time, walking

 

 

 

                           to spend a day walking
                           around under wide grey clouds with

                           pastel edges drifting
                           but earthed a hundred times by a shaft of light

                           over silvery grass
                           a thousand times by the scrub grass beneath each nostril

 

 

 

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

Ashdown Forest wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
being wormhole: rather
clouds & time & walking wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
grey wormhole: good session
silver wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
smell wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out

 

Dionne Warwick

Tags

1960s, 2014, buildings, Dionne Warwick, eyes, fashion, hair, pastel, rhythm, searching, singing, streetlight, streets, traffic, wires

 

 

 

                                Dionne Warwick

                                              held
                her note skipped and perched about the pediments and cornices
                                above the street-pastel traffic and
                                leaning streetlights and wires
                                and loga-rhythms

                                              searching
                                through hair and style
                                with eyes made-up
                                and always lingered          a little
                                to catch up with

                                              the proper coda

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: our whore-y little compromises
Dionne Warwick & streetlight wormhole: To my Mum
eyes wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
hair wormhole: thar she perched
searching wormhole: dream 260713
streets wormhole: 1972

 

1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

Tags

10*, 1959, 1960s, 2012, 2015, 99/1, abandonment, air, airport, America, anxiety, apricot, art deco, avenue, beauty, bedroom, birdsong, blossom, blue, books, branches, breathing, buildings, business, Carol, Central Park, charcoal, childhood, choice, clothes, clouds, coffee, coffee shop, compromise, crane, Dad, divorce, dog, dream, Eglinton Hill, evening, eyebrow, eyes, falling, fashion, floodlights, Ford Anglia, freedom, furniture, ghosts, glamour, Glasgow, green, grey, haiku, hair, Have, history, horizon, hotel, identity, life, lifetimes, light, lilac, living, London, looking, love, magazine, Manhattan, marble, Mini, mist, money, morning, Mum, music, New York, obligation, pastel, people, phone, pink, plane, posture, radar, reaching, reading, roads, sadness, sidewalk, sitting, sky, smile, society, sound, space, sparrows, speech, spotlights, Steely Dan, streetlight, sun, sunlight, talking, taxi, terrace, texting, time, traffic, traffic lights, train, travelling, trees, uniform, waiting, walking, walls, walnut, white, wind, windows, work, years, yellow

                                          1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

                                straight out from school to Heathrow on the M25
                                a network of lonely roads going nowhere, then;
                                waiting, studying coffee highlights in the green
                                lobby with blue spotlights and pillared space for

                                phones to pace up and down and talk it still is,
                                loudly; at the next hotel we wait with more spot-
                                lights in our eyes no matter where we sit; furniture
                                deco-curved and just off right-angle, held together,

                                material to wood, for decades with check-
                                pattern and slight stain; there is a locked-in-
                                ness in our world on all sides which only our
                                future eyes – that never look directly – betray

                                in their gaze; early flight tomorrow; in the
                                morning-effect light shifting, the mist hanging
                                around the base of the sky, land spread with
                                low buildings always on the horizon, flat and

                                matt, before the sun flanks their edges into 3D,
                                radar-spinning, floodlights turn off, arms of
                                cranes hold their reach, and … the control
                                tower; 3567 miles and I didn’t bring enough

                                books (you can never bring enough books);
                                I travelled for lifetimes to arrive in New York,
                                still the same person: roads scraped and pock-
                                marked, trees still reach and lean in front of the

                                sky, people still live city life breathing in and
                                out the power of my money, lights still go on
                                in the evening and in between traffic shoals
                                the sparrows bicker in the trees; in room 506

                                over Central Park, already I am familiar with
                                the lore of the branch, the places-to-go apricot
                                street lights, the white path lights, the traffic
                                lights and the ‘cheeps’ bounced off building wall

                                between the lmmmdmda-lmmmdmda – laersssh
                                through the rain-dusty windows, under grey-sky
                                steel-clouds and the slowly shifting charcoal; but
                                then there is always the next day, the ever-waiting

                                gulp-open and blue-chip sorry of impressionistic
                                sidewalk, the walnut marble frontages walking
                                south up into downtown in cold air between
                                buildings and didn’t bring enough clothes (I never

                                know what clothes to bring) – by Radio City ‘with a
                                transistor and a large sum of money to spend’;
                                everything created for living beyond subsistence
                                everything produced at cost through labour

                                everything earned through labour if you can get it
                                everything obtained at price and compromise
                                everything experienced at cost through trademark
                                everything Had, but no one left to have it …

                                everything that is uneasy in the modern day
                                was manufactured behind the half-closed blinds
                                of America – home of the Potential and Slave –
                                and yet … it is so sad-beautiful: the space sculpted

                                by façades of apartment blocks giant arm-widths
                                apart, communities of single window – italicised
                                nib–scratches – stepped upwards and backwards
                                the Avenues of Uprise reaching higher and

                                lower again and again and again; America has
                                so much condensed history since it braved the
                                conceit and responsibility, of choice: cleansed
                                by ethnically assimilating, pledged by conforming

                                allegiance; Someone had to make a stand against
                                all this equivocation and by God Almighty We
                                Made   that   Stand; `made continental infrastructure
                                out of it, far bigger far more reaching even than

                                law and democracy … … but there is such
                                width in your sadness – lilac blossom before
                                marble façade; such height in your sadness –
                                giddy out on the balconies looking eight floors more

                                above; such blank in your sadness – when you
                                skip my English joke and call ‘you’re welcome’
                                from the till; such sadness when you ask for
                                change outside Starbucks; even the trees through

                                the hotel window, even the wide sidewalk cleaned
                                for strolling and not curbing, even the smiling
                                doorman in brown suit … all Had; all kept
                                in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place

                                by gigantitude, (when I was young an image
                                of a building so many floors high pinnacling to a
                                turret roof on the pink cover on the blue cover
                                of the insurance policies that my Mum kept;

                                my mother is now dead the policies came to
                                nothing); 99: “for all the freedom and choice to
                                be Had, life is hard when you pay with your work
                                and no time left and no money to choose

                                leaves you tired with no sense of humour”;
                                1: “for all the freedom and choice to be Had
                                life is anxiety where you pay for with your
                                history and obligation, never stopped still-

                                enough to choose, leaves you always with
                                dyed hair; look, only on the fifth floor of the
                                Eldorado, a man at the window canary short-
                                sleeve shirt turns back into the room, traffic light

                                booms out on a long arm swinging slightly taxis
                                u-turn as the sun comes up from behind; women’s
                                magazines, waiting for Mum at the hairdresser’s
                                in the mid-sixties, illustrations, young tree avenues,

                                blossoming handbags, little dogs on leash, promise
                                of love, promise of life, promise of man’s jaw in
                                boardroom where cologne cinches the deal, slight
                                smile signs the papers: maybe later some chinos

                                and open collar on the terrace; there was a calendar
                                brought home from work (“not needed … we work
                                in London”) – buildings of Manhattan, can decorate
                                my room, make my world, all the stepped down

                                walls of windows up which b-e-y-o-n-d myself
                                giddy and beautiful, I cannot look up or down but
                                keep them high on the wall; going out in the
                                evening Daddy ‘have to’ ‘to do with work’ ‘can’t be

                                helped’ white shirt bow-tie, clean-cut neck cologne
                                ‘good for contacts’ ‘if I can, just’ ‘business’; there
                                was a new white Mini, a new white Anglia parked
                                outside on the hill over London, Matchbox models

                                to match for the boys, going into ‘business’ ‘make
                                a go’ Dennis & Dennis, home, evening drinks, meet
                                the family, the boys play Dennis G and Dennis P
                                for years after; ‘… Daddy is leaving, he will not be

                                coming back’; I had thought it was all pastel-blue-
                                and-grey beautiful but the glamour got to him first
                                and now I dream of falling off balconies and ledges,
                                (do I fall up or down); evening: ghouls from the

                                subway gaining and pushing but the top trees-only
                                gently leaning, hybrids swashing yellow down the
                                tarmac in schools while the thunder of a plane
                                descends; morning: eyebrows raise like coving, the

                                reggae lingers      then kicks in; a neat rhombus of
                                sunlight unconcerned across her cheek, a blind rolls
                                down, ‘I’ll just read a chapter’-fixed lashes, the
                                rhombus travelling now across collar bones between

                                her white collars; Carol reads far better than me,
                                she reads history as it happens, she is the ‘captain-
                                speaking’, she knows what time it is      in other
                                countries, she knows there is no airport in Glasgow

                                (she also bullshits when cornered); now I miss all of
                                this, I see only peoples’ posture contrary to their
                                eyes, and little else; I came to Manhattan and saw
                                your avenues of strange displacement your streets

                                of darkness and morning-side; I found I was there
                                a lifetime ago, but you left me and I have moved on
                                now and I shall not be back, there is no need;
                                I shall celebrate your strange beauty from afar;

                                Newark Airport: everybody here / is talking all
                                the time to / someone somewhere else; the control
                                room sits            overhanging on the concrete stem,
                                fingers of cloud float nonchalantly by, with no delays

                                today, two girls study magazines, swap articles,
                                a third texts constantly with fixed smirk; but you,
                                you are so beautiful with hennaed hair braided
                                neatly back because you are in uniform, you are

                                taking a break, ID and equipment around your
                                neck, clear dark skin, grey shirt and St. John’s
                                badge eating a bag     of crisps with eyebrows sharp
                                and eyes so white looking, not talking     looking

 

 

 

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

abandonment & streetlight wormhole: dawn
air wormhole: just
anxiety & Carol & crane & Have & lifetimes & London & love & pink & sky & train & travelling & white & work wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
apricot wormhole: only
beauty wormhole: smiling
bedroom wormhole: sunny morning
blossom & branches & waiting wormhole: I could step / more open
blue & grey & mist & trees & walking wormhole: right to be
books wormhole: a light rosé
breathing & life & speech wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
buildings & identity & society & space & windows wormhole: where the real action // always is
childhood & dream & Eglinton Hill & ghosts & green & looking & morning & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
clouds & light & posture wormhole: Buddha Amitabha
coffee wormhole: poised patiently for / hours
coffee shop 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
compromise wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
Dad & traffic lights & yellow wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
dog wormhole: silence
evening wormhole: lobby
eyes wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
haiku(esque) & hair & Manhattan & people & roads wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
history wormhole: 20th century / schzoid man
horizon wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
hotel wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
lilac wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
living & sitting & sound & sun wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
money wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
Mum wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
music & reading wormhole: sometimes
obligation wormhole: scattered
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sparrows wormhole: zazen in everyday life
spotlights wormhole: ‘the dining room …’
talking wormhole: – sigh! –
walls wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
wind wormhole: Christmas

 

new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

Tags

2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, being, bench, birch, blue, Bob Hoskins, bridge, buddleia, buildings, Carol, change, crane, dark, doing, education, emptiness, experience, faces, field, fireworks, frost, glass, glasses, green, grey, Have, horizontal, houses, hyperbole, identity, impermanence, journey, life, lifetimes, light, listening, London, love, mouth, not knowing, openness, orange, others, passing, pastel, phone, pink, poetry, pointlessness, politics, red, scaffolding, silver, sky, speech, St. Paul's, station, staying, study, sun, table, talking to myself, Thames, thinking, thought, time, tired, train, travelling, trees, twilight, Uckfield-London line, voices, walking, white, windows, work

                                   new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to
                                   walk the bridges across the Thames, and
                                   listen to the voices say it is, and was, like,
                                   but get back home before the fireworks
                                   obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

                                   look out for the throwing up of hands and
                                   the want-only doing it anyway without thought
                                   or fibre thinking you deserve the better after
                                   all the point and anxiety of thinking; rather
                                   stay with the pastel openness of not knowing

                                   what to do; “it’s like they’re doing this to wind
                                   me up” all the mouth-open listening and loud
                                   hyperbole of their being, all app’d and down-
                                   loaded they, obbviously haven’t finished studying
                                   or whatever it is they’ve been bought into

                                   college to do these days; their time’ll come;
                                   frost covers the passing fields and trees, equally;
                                   “t’b’fair-r-rr, I’m not gen–you–in–lee concerned;
                                   I think, if you always stay in the same en–vie–
                                   rhon–meant …” gaze-mouth open … “I think,

                                   you need to have new ex–peer–re:–NCs
                                   nyoopeople nyooplaces” stopping waiting
                                   starting ten-ta-tively slow gliding, while another
                                   train shifts approaching the same station priority
                                   passes for a long time; then on another train,

                                   “it’s like we’re on another train”; frost thawing
                                   equally on the waste grounds between lines,
                                   green and horizontals return, except for the
                                   bare silver birch; so they no longer store parcels
                                   at London stations look how much they’ve

                                   brightly opened them up no more dingy offices
                                   and partitions where people lived their long
                                   and working life; on the stepped bench by the
                                   river across from the Poetry Library somewhere
                                   in the Southbank Centre I struggle with the

                                   vacuous way things have to change but forget
                                   the dark silt accumulated in unused yards
                                   where not even the buddleia grow, as St. Paul’s
                                   becomes dwarfed by glass and leaning building;
                                   all the sun across the riverside architecture –

                                   depth from finial cupola and scaffolding except
                                   the red cranes up into the grey-blue-blue-grey
                                   sky concrete counter-weight and lifting-hods
                                   catching light despite orange lights clean atop each
                                   arm and elbow; crowds walking the bridge under

                                   suspension ties leaning towards the last pillar; tired
                                   now we travel home under neon light on exasperated
                                   faces with no expression past turning houses and
                                   raised embankments, a passenger stands suddenly
                                   to leave, “oh, he’s dropped a tooth” quips Carol out

                                   loud, “I’m joking; it was a mint imperial” rolled
                                   under the table, look, the man with pink-frame
                                   glasses chuckles into his phone like Bob Hoskins,
                                   love him; “this is coach number five of twelve”
                                   we need to make sure we are travelling in the

                                   correct part of the train otherwise we cannot alight;
                                   “please mind the gap”; I cannot retain things that
                                   have passed (I can’t help it: “that are past”) no matter
                                   how much they may chime with the time in
                                   retrospect, during the last leg of “whatever” journey

                                   home looking for more to add to the poem greedy
                                   through the darkening windows, ah, but it’s too late
                                   now, the arc has already formed the spine, all the
                                   particulars falling in fitted pattern like feathers giving
                                   the illusion of lift and flight amid pervasive dissolution

 

 

 

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

anxiety & identity & time wormhole: re lax // me
architecture & bench & buddleia & glasses wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
being & doing & houses & openness & sky & sun & windows wormhole: lobby
birch wormhole: Eridge Station
blue & glass & green wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
bridge & trees wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
buildings & Have & speech wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
Carol & pink & politics wormhole: Luisenplatz
change wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
crane & grey & light & London & mouth & red & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
education wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
emptiness & pontlessness wormhole: never there
faces wormhole: – sigh! –
field wormhole: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
life & others wormhole: career came to naught …
lifetimes wormhole: transition
listening wormhole: there are patient listeners
love & poetry wormhole: sometimes
orange wormhole: Christmas
passing & travelling wormhole: dawn
silver 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
study wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
talking to myself 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
Thames wormhole: 1967
thinking wormhole: thinking wide enough
thought wormhole: breathe it all / in
train wormhole: is she / looking at me?
twilight wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hever
voices wormhole: ‘green post …’
white wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
work wormhole: corroboration