looking hard enough

Tags

2019, 6*, Blake, books, earth, leaves, left, life, looking, path, private, right, roots, smell, stone, streets, Totnes, trees, walls

                down to the right are paths
                wrap ‘tween stone and wall and rind up dale

                that smell of leaf over earth
                and rooting writhed and coupling too to earth

                and down to the left,
                down through constant broadcast high through leaves,

                high streets of venue and outlet to cater for
                every private over life, that

                will yield a book on Blake,
                if not looking hard enough, and books

                that you already had if you
                were

 

and … eventually you have to go into town; in the 21st century you can’t escape from the town …

 

 

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

books wormhole: beneath
leaves & path wormhole: breakfast
life wormhole: despite all / depiction
looking wormhole: then
smell & stone wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
streets wormhole: riders of the night
trees wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
walls wormhole: travel // when I die

 

Advertisement

breakfast

Tags

2019, 7*, blindness, blogging, branches, breakfast, breathing, canopy, coffee, dark, echo, energy, eyes, flash, gooseberry, ground, growth, jam, leaves, life, light, living, monkey, path, reaching, reading, samsara, seeing, shadow, sound, sunlight, toast, trees, walking, way, wind, woodland

                breakfast

                these shadows on a long walk
                through the woodland with only occasional sun

                all there, underneath the undergrowth
                cannot see the ground, the stems that grow from it

                branches reach, leaves envelope everywhere
                from nowhere; weave

                and grow round and entwine each other;
                if I lift the leaves to see my way forward –

                searching for light, searching for life
                to grow, to continue – and if I break the smaller branches to

                make way
                I will scratch my arms, sap will sting my skin, my

                eyes, I cannot see, I cannot see;
                and I won’t see; some trees

                are quicker and older (than me)
                they hold the path and reach wide,

                and creepers make them fat
                and vines hang like curtains of water;

                the canopy above, maximised
                to greatest energy, sent back down through rough wires;

                only when the wind leans
                or a monkey leaps, is there a flash of light, gone by the

                time I’ve looked back down to the path
                blinded, to see where I am

                there must be so much light somewhere
                out there, if only I weren’t stumbling around and bleeding

                … really; I come downstairs
                and breathe coffee and spiced home – made gooseberry jam on home – made toast                           

                while reading my posts … yes,
                a thousand hacks and sap in the dark

                where I cannot see
                and cannot know where I am

                a thousand ‘choks’ deferred
                the undergrowth too dense to echo

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 12: How can I attain happiness when the causes for happiness are obtained only through great effort and very rarely, and when the seeds­ of pain and sorrow are so prevalent, relentless and multifarious that they are realised easily and without any effort? And yet it is only from suffering that the thought and longing for escape and liberation from the suffering of conditioned existence will come about … therefore, O my deepest mind, hold yourself strong, patient, steadfast!

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

branches & breathing wormhole: blue sky high
coffee wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
echo & path & walking wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
eyes & life wormhole: eyes like petals
leaves & living wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
light & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
reading wormhole: {reading right to left}
samsara & sound wormhole: at Kreukenhof
seeing wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening

Tags

2019, 7*, Arya Lalitavistara, Bodhisattva, Buddha, calm, dark, demon, earth, echo, elephant, food, ground, happiness, light, lion, lotus, mindfulness, mountain, omniscient, past life, path, plateau, power, river, samsara, spontaneity, stars, step, three poisons, Tree of Awakening, view, walking, wheel

                so he bathed in the Nairañjanā,
                he ate the food, his strength

                returned, and he began the walk
                toward the Great Tree; he walked

                with easy gait, grounded
                as a mountain, each step gained

                and graceful with no fight, dream
                or idea; the placement pad of a lion,

                the calliper-swing of an elephant,
                a stride that touched not the earth

                but left perfect wheels
                upon the ground, a step that echoed

                across the plateau, a step that
                levelled mountain paths, each step

                that lead to happy lands,
                each step sprung from past lotuses

                of love and stable intention,
                that rendered demons powerless

                that calmed all view, that evanesced
                the darkness and stopped the

                endless endless rounds; his
                walk outshone the distant stars,

                his walk becalmed the rulers;
                the walk spontaneous, the walk

                omniscient, the walk mindful
                of every ancient step, with such a gait

                the Bodhisattva set out
                for the Seat of Awakening

 

from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra – the life story of the Buddha – originally using the words from the translation by the Dharmachakra Translation 84000 Committee which is freely available online here (for which thank you, thank you) and then other words once my gaze had settled into the image; the ‘Nairañjanā’ is the river by which the Buddha practised his austerities, the ‘food’ was that given to him by Sujata

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: Sujātā
echo wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
path wormhole: alabaster balustrade
power wormhole: in turgid reflection
river wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
stars wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

alabaster balustrade

Tags

2019, 6*, balustrade, going, holiday, Lanzarote, path, pedestal, pediment, perspective, shadow, staying, time, white, yin yang

                alabaster balustrade demarking
                path and apartamentos

                white and shadow curled about
                the bulbing drop,

                shadowed under pediment and
                white along the pedestal

                a hundred times
                in precise perspective either way

                will yin and yang
                within almost noticeable elapse

                so that it will
                no longer matter whether you proceed or stay

 

white & shadow contemplation from the terrace of a February holiday in Lanzarote

 

 

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

holiday wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
path wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
shadow wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
time wormhole: and … // … sound
white wormhole: intent

 

Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872

Tags

1872, 2018, 6*, black, chimney, contemplation, earth, Eternity, grey, hill, horizon, leaves, moon, path, Pissarro, red, sky, winter, woodland

                at the brow of even mild hills
                on the curve of the red-leaf path

                the copse at either side will be
                black and hack-hack skeletal and

                the tatterdemalion-grey sky
                will seem like the moon has

                come too close to Earth, only
                the ridge and chimney of the next

                dwelling sits down beyond the
                brow quietly contemplating eternity

 

Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872 by Camille Pissarro – the only image I could find online, but it is not the colours I have seen

 

 

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

black wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
chimney wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
grey & red wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
horizon & moon wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
leaves wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
path wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
sky wormhole: {reading right to left}
winter wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

 

The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804

Tags

1804, 2018, 6*, ambition, being, clouds, doing, emptiness, feet, height, identity, leaning, path, power, realisation, space, step, striving, William Turner

                this hideous gulf
                I step into, the path

                kept too tight to the
                bulgeoning sides

                urging my center
                of balance out from

                my picky feet; out here,
                I see that now;

                futher up, that I’ll
                never make, the heights

                of terrible summit
                commit unspeakable act,

                leaning to void,
                becoming cloud

 

 

 

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

being & identity wormhole: to let be
clouds wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
emptiness wormhole: you
feet wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
path wormhole: the balance necessary between
power wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
realisation wormhole: despite that
space wormhole: ‘streetsigns …’
striving wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being

 

the balance necessary between

Tags

2017, 7*, appearance, balance, being, cause and effect, checking, coagulation, denial, doing, empty, fortune, healing, holding onto, karma, legacy, life, lifetimes, lunge, morning, path, Refuge, relationship, room, self-grasping, shutters, statue, trauma, true nature, urge

in my corner of the room
                I have only just noticed the shutters ajar –
                                wondering if I dare push them further apart –

the dynamics of past lifetimes
                rebirths of exact measure to the traumas
                                round which they coagulate; but then, also, the

healing of relationships
                which tip towards fortune however
                                you make them, the balance necessary between doing

all that holding and checking
                of all those causes and effects which
                                comb-through the tangles of legacy but which

can so-easily become the
                local point of selfish, and being
                                insight through the skein of appearences into

their respective empty
                nature enabling them all to
                                appear in the first place which can so-easily

become a stoney denial
                of causality into one’s own statue
                                stuck in pose; the path through which neither

aggravates nor heals;
                the practice of Refuge in the
                                morning and at the urge to lunge of all

my doings, alongside
                all the other 6-fingered and 4-
                                thumbed sisters of this world

 

this teetered out of a comment made in response to one of Jana H. White’s posts, but I’ve been all the way through her site and can’t find it – she must have taken it down: it would make sense of the ‘corner of the room’ and the ‘6-fingered and 4-thumbed’ references, but, maybe, if you tune out a little, it works nonetheless…

 

 

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

balance wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
being & doing wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
life & lifetimes wormhole: amniotic avenue
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
path wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell

 

in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell

Tags

'scape, 2013, 8*, attention, Belgium, block, breeze, circular poem, clouds, Ghent, leaf, living, looking, lost, notice, park, path, preoccupied, reaching, searching, seeing, settling, shops, sitting, trees, undergrowth, writing

 

 

 

                                              stuck
                         lost and                         for  something
            preoccupied                                  to write
             and shops                                         I am
            past trees                                             usually plagued
             as I drift                                               by clustered
  I am looking at                                 in the belly-heavy
to see everything                                         Citadel
            stopping me                                  rainclouds Park
        my subconscious                         idling                     a leaf
                                            through                                           new
                                                                              ly fell to                         for the
                                                                        the path                                    constant search
                                                                 the breeze                                           reach for the
                                                     worries the top                                                 more to
                                                          of the trees                                                     deal with
                                                          constantly                                                       more to
                                                          but lets the                                                     they have
                                                        undergrowth                                                  it seems
                                                              settle itself                                             when they reach                                
                                                               comfortably                                      it’s only
                                                                         into its seat                         unnoticed
                                                                                                 alert and

 

 

 

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

attention & looking wormhole: Day Out
breeze & clouds & seeing wormhole: weight
circular poem & sitting wormhole: wakeoutofadream
living wormhole: nothing significant
park & path wormhole: the bench
searching wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
settling wormhole: six paramitas
shops wormhole: time travel
trees wormhole: within
writing wormhole: Virginia

 

the bench

Tags

2016, 5*, bench, breeze, Carol, leaf, listening, park, passing, path, sitting, time, trees, waves, woodland

                           the bench

                           we sit
                by the avenue and listen to the trees above blow in
                           waves

                           while
                a single leaf across the path waves like an Indian
                           maybe

 

everything hinges like a plate on a stick if the concentration is held while everything else passes by; and just in case it doesn’t, we’ll hold an Indian head-loll to such an absolute …

 

 

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

bench wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing
breeze & time wormhole: reprieve
Carol wormhole: 35 years ago …
listening & passing wormhole: the // orange rose
park wormhole: one day / in 1956
path wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sitting wormhole: singsong chant
trees wormhole: child
waves wormhole: balance

 

that comicbookshop … // … in dreams

Tags

1960s, 2015, 8*, anxiety, bay window, black, childhood, collecting, comics, doing, doors, dream, Edward Hopper, eyes, floorboards, frustration, grey, heart, high, hill, labyrinth, lemon, life, lifetimes, lino, message, moon, morning, numbers, path, pipes, Plumstead, power, reaching, searching, shadow, shops, sky, smell, society, streets, sycamore, Thames, universe, walls, windows, Woolwich, wormhole, writing

that comicbookshop …

where the sidestreets meet together off the highstreets
under slanting shadows down the rear pipework of façades and blackened window
from so much higher up than could never concern us it’s frightening,
the morning after Hopper’s Nighthawks,
is closing down

the ones I try to get to when I find myself done in town
(right after the frustration of trying to get somewhere or the anxiety of trying to
get away from somewhere that always follows me) but never arrive at;
I make my various ways there, I know the routes
like the back of my hand

the ones with warped door stuck at the top or stuck at the bottom
(will the glass pane hold), with step onto lino once lemon and grey with hope
now one with the floorboards sagging under warren of backrooms (forgotten lifetimes
wormholes everywhere) to the pulp of paper and number for finding,                
are closing down; I

should have patronised them more, I suppose;
`still haven’t found that second issue, that elusive fourth, and the stacks
just kept on sliding: lettering and universes pressing their skies and moons into my eyeball
but I couldn’t keep up with them, blinked too soon, have to get on,
things to do, places to be

it’s having a sale, clearing all stock; the sentinels stand impassive
to all find, impassive to all loss, hooded eyes on somefaraway beach;
for old times’ sake I pick some up, figures reaching stanceofopera out of panel,
maybe a sixth issue, maybe an intertextual fanzine, avoid the modern
too defined in detail, too static in marque,

and come away with stash held to heart, out
into the bustle busily in all direction, weak indication and giant message
I’ll work my way uphill by quiet sidestreet past high walls holding sycamores and
bay windows over the river home to catalogue my finds like a labyrinth and
plot their weave like a stanza

… in dreams

 

 

 

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

anxiety & searching wormhole: pocket
black & shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
childhood & life wormhole: alighted
comics wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
doing & dream & lifetimes wormhole: comfy
doors wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
Edward Hopper wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
grey & morning & Plumstead & shadow & sky & streets wormhole: faintly apricot air?
lemon wormhole: 1967
moon wormhole: the too big moon
path wormhole: Clea
power wormhole: the skyline
smell wormhole: 1967
society wormhole: this sodden land
Thames wormhole: time
walls wormhole: familiasyncopation
windows wormhole: open window
Woolwich wormhole: up on the hill
writing wormhole: writing: // in turn