• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
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    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
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    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
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    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
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    • through the crash
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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: Ramsden Heath

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2016, 9*, alley, axe, birth, black, blue, classroom, echo, eyes, faces, fields, garden, grey, hate, hazel, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, mist, morning, passing, pigs, pink, Ramsden Heath, Robin, silence, sky, snow, sound, speech, step, sun, teacher, thought, ugliness, vertical, waiting, walls, white, windows, winter, witness, woodland, yellow

            snow

            waiting;

            ruffles beneath the trembling ivy,
            divergent verticals in the hazel coppices;

            silence;

            reverent steps, and in the cavernous
            grey of high hangs the faintest, pink;

            baton;

            on a woodland bank a single lesser
            periwinkle holds up a blue flower,

            by the wall a solo leaf descants to the ground
            and a snowflake touches the cheek;

            turn;

            the black background of the woods
            a million flakes seen,

            in the classroom thirty pairs of eyes
            drift across to the window

            and the music teacher holds
            his sentence;

            thought;

            leeward black, and fields of white, if
            we were to hate everything that

            included rip and tear of any ugliness,
            there would be nothing left to love;

            morning;

            through window panes the sun
            is a flat yellow disc viewable

            without hurt to the eye,
            mist divides land into borough

            and alleyway stepping crunch from the
            steam kitchen into the sparkling garden;

            piggery;

            at the bottom of the garden,
            piglets stop snuffling around and stand

            looking, like little pink statues, then …
            hurtle across the yard barking at the sun

            (the sow had rather build her nest in the
             corner of the field, one morning

             she was there, an army of piglets
             lined up at the milk bar

             the most ridiculous expressions
             of content upon their faces, and

             a robin on the solid water
             of the cattle trough);

            witness;

            the ch-nnk and bite of axe in log
            bounced across the fields to the woods and back with

            such clarity I expected it to continue
            as he laid his axe aside, “Morning”,

            “Morning”;

            it is not winter that dispels life,
            but life that dispels winter

 

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

 

 

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

black & blue & echo & eyes & faces & fields & garden & grey & kitchen & life & love & morning & pink & silence & sky & snow & sound & sun & walls & white & windows & winter & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
faces wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
passing wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
thought wormhole: Clea
waiting wormhole: returning home handsome

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

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Tags

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

Safe Home

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

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

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

Nag's Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My old friend stood up and stretched.

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

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

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

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

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

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

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

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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

 

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the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

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1960s, 1967, 1970s, 2007, 2016, Billericay, birdsong, childhood, colour, cottage, education, Essex, evening, farm, garden, grandfather, green, image, John, Kenya, life, London, love, morning, Ramsden Heath, South Africa, uncle, war, windows, writing

 

 

 

I have come into possession of a piece of work that my Uncle Mick did during the 1960s.   He was in his thirties when he wrote the ‘Boats of Vallisneria’ having survived a childhood of war and evacuation, having completed what education was available then, having completed a period of military service in Kenya and South Africa and returned to London, to move to Billericay in Essex, to begin his life proper.   His father (my grandfather) died early in the 60s and he spent the rest of his life living with and looking after his mother living in the tied cottage to the farm he worked.

He completed this work because he wanted to explore the shape and pattern of [his] life.   He completed it even while the changes in farming brought his work there to a close.   [He went on to become a gardener and eventually set up his own business framing pictures].   He submitted the manuscript to Dent & Sons for publication, but they declined.

He let me have a look at the script when I was in my late teens and visiting and whinnying on about wanting to be a writer.   This was in the later 1970s.   I was way too green and cursive to read it with great discernment or generosity and commented that it was OK but quite amateurish (a youthful candour with which I hurt many a person close to me when I was young and arrogant – I’m sorry, everyone).

The dear man died in 2007, and I had long since forgotten his work (although I remember being honoured that he had shown me his work – it confirmed to me that being a writer was a noble thing to be).   I had a visit recently from my brother who brought a whole case of artefacts from my uncle, one of which was the original manuscript.

… I think I’d like to publish it on my blog.   Share the work with the world that he was not so able to do during his own time.   In his honour.   In memoriam.   To preserve and celebrate the green-paint-on-sturdy-wood life of Ramsden Heath during the 1960s and 1970s.   To celebrate the linen-atmosphere of small-pane cottage window looking out on the garden in all facet.   To listen in on the darken-colours of morning and evening and bird-call in Essex countryside, every one different and newly-miraculous found.

While typing it up I felt I could tap the kernel of what he was exploring and cut in to his images and experiences within – and sometimes behind – his writing.   I would also like to explore his writing through my own.   And publish them alongside each other like a healthy pair of framed pictures above the mantelpiece.   To celebrate my love for him.   And make the contact with him that I was too gauche to make while he was alive.   (How much I appreciate people the most, once I have lost life with them).

His work will come first … soon

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

1967 wormhole: 1967
childhood & morning wormhole: currency of generations
education wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
evening wormhole: constant hummm
garden wormhole: diligence
green & life & love wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
London wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
Ramsden Heath & uncle wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
war wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
windows wormhole: between thoughts
writing wormhole: balancing // with a whole lot of deft

 

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Michael Redford: triptych

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1935, 1970, 2007, 2009, 2012, afterlife, armchair, being, black, brown, carpet, chair, cigar, doing, doors, evening, fire, floorboards, garden, green, horizon, life, living, living room, night, piano, plants, plastic, Ramsden Heath, realisation, sitting, sitting room, smell, sound, table, talking, trees, uncle, windows, wine, wood

 

 

 

                                           Michael Redford
                                           1935-2007

                                           later on
                           he strolled in the garden
                           breathing the night and the plants
                           smoking a fine cigar

                           then he paused
                           and looked back at the armchair
                           where he had been sitting –
                                           Pphffffff

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                              sitting room

                                              plastic-marbled
                                              chest-height handle

                                              smell of sofa-linen
                                              and wood-fire evenings

                                              with company
                                              and dark green wines

                                              cool black boards and
                                              the white patterned carpet

                                              with almost-meeting
                                              crenellated walls

                                              brow-height mantelpiece
                                              on jungle green

                                              and the piano in the
                                              corner with duff bass keys –

                                              plant-shaking

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                                                      1970

                                                                      to my uncle
                                                                      shifting on
                                                                      hardplastic
                                                                      seat of dining
                                                                      chair – crack –

                                                                      elbow uncomfortable
                                                                      on table-edge
                                                                      carving – creak –
                                                                      to execute a
                                                                      perfect tree

                                                                      on the horizon
                                                                      with just two strokes
                                                                      one brown
                                                                      one green
                                                                      I knew then

                                                                      to put down
                                                                      my compass plans
                                                                      for every detail
                                                                      but only just now
                                                                      doing it

 

looking for what to publish today, I found my uncle unassumingly proffering the lesson in life that he always gave, even nine years after he died: that you don’t look for life, you notice it; some teachers teach by being rather than saying, so that you don’t realise you are being taught until you know; wherever he is now, I hope he knows what he gave me/us … in fact I dedicate the clean-ity of all I notice to return the gift to my uncle wherever his lives have led him now

 

Mick and Mark

 

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

being & doing wormhole: need
black wormhole: the start of adolescence
brown wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
carpet wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
doors & garden wormhole: impressionism
evening wormhole: well,
green & talking wormhole: bavardage
horizon & life wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
living & night & smell & sound & table & windows & wood wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
living room wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
piano wormhole: tabla
Ramsden Heath & uncle wormhole: … still waving!
realisation wormhole: dream career // groggy
sitting wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
sitting room wormhole: purple and mauve
trees wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

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… still waving!

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 1 Comment

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2007, 2014, 8*, afternoon, bedroom, brown, cars, cigar, Dad, death, dog, doing, family, field, fingers, green, hedge, Herbert Road, house, kitchen, letter, life, lifetimes, mirror, muse, olive, painting, rain, Ramsden Heath, red, roof, seeing, shadow, silence, smile, streets, time, trees, uncle, walking, wind, windows, wood, yellow

a salute to my Uncle Mick (1935 – 2007) who lived with great gust through the trees and great dark-wood texture for most of his life in Ramsden Heath, Essex, quietly, with a smile

 

 

 

                                          Dear Dad

                           it was good to see you on such a sad day
            Mick would have been satisfied that we had come together as family again
                           whether he was there or not

                           I wandered in his house a little to say goodbye
                                          and to see if there was anything I wanted to take
                                          to remember him I didn’t take anything
            I might have taken endless bits
                                          awkwardly
                           or I had to realise that all my time with him
                                          had happened thirty years ago already passed that I cannot hold onto
            I have to say goodbye to him
                                          with gratitude
                                          to recognise what he gave to my life
                                                              and to the world
                           a more complete tribute
            than trying to hold onto all the bits and pieces

                                                              all those people who attended the ceremony
                                          all pulled together by eye and staple
                           the perfect meet of frame and circumstance*

                                          Mick taught me to see
                           the colour of oil in a lamp
                                                              the deep colour of port through a green bottle
                                          the deepest green of holly and laurel
                           the shadows under border shrubs

                                                              I learnt to smell hedgerows
                                          while walking too fast past them
                                          I listened to the ancientness
                           of horse and leather and dogs
            I creaked the chairs and drew the wood and linen of pubs closed
                                                              to the rain-slatter of the afternoon

                           I envied his example – the lesson – the nobility of action
                           translucent gallantry and service to anyone who was around –
            it was not too much to go out into the kitchen and make everyone a round of sandwiches when every one couldn’t be bothered –
                                          quiet and strong

                           I remember
            Ringo** lifted up to head height so that he could see himself in the mirror
                                          (he didn’t notice, but looked at the floor)
                           I remember the canary-yellow sports car parked in the field
                                                              away from Nan’s annoyance

                                          and the draw of a cigar slightly moist yet
                                                              with light brown wrapping and deep brown leaf –
            he was completely arrived when he held that cigar gently between jointed fingers –
                           and the crawling out of a bedroom window right along the roof of the outhouses
                           to get THE shot in a water fight during a too hot day
            and the magic – the alchemy – showing me how to paint the image of a tree
                                          with oils – a stroke and a dab-smudge in the wind
                                          you ‘suggest’ the shape rather than create it –
                           the single detail he painted on the mantelpiece in his sitting room
                                                                                              olive green
            the near-tearful goodbyes when the visit came to an end waving until we were out of sight –
                                                              he’s still waving!

                           he once showed me annoyance
                                          when he stopped me walking straight across a side street in Herbert Road
                                          without checking I was a little stunned
                                                              but enormously honoured that he thought it was important

                           I probably only saw him
                           for forty days in my life
            but he has coloured my world as indelibly as oil paint
                                                              (suggested not created)
                           I saw great loss in your face and your shoulders today
                                          Dad
                           but please please look at all the colour and texture
                                          in your life from the 72 years you shared with him
                                          he was an OK painter on canvas
                           but he created wonderful landscapes
                                                              in our lives

                                                                                 he once lamented
                           that you and I don’t see each other much – and he was damned right of course –
            his last masterstroke was to show me this
                                                              today

 

* Mick served in Kenya during his National Service; when he returned he worked on a farm and as a gardener and finally set up his own business framing pictures which supported him for the rest of his life
** stupid boxer dog family pet

 

 

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

afternoon & green & olive & rain wormhole: bad sneakers
bedroom wormhole: dream 040198 / Eglinton Hill
brown wormhole: blue and green / a l l s o r t s
cars & dog wormhole: through the window
death wormhole: existence
doing & smile & time wormhole: t w e n t y f i r s t c e n t u r y l i f e
family & house wormhole: father figure – triptych
field wormhole: slow slow / quick quick / slo / w
hedge wormhole: 3:30 am
Herbert Road wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
kitchen & yellow wormhole: zazen in everyday life
life wormhole: tag cloud poem I – numbers
lifetimes wormhole: Have what, now?
mirror wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
muse wormhole: Saturday
Ramsden Heath wormhole: duck calls
red & silence & trees & walking wormhole: let
roof wormhole: … the discipline of shamatha / and the waft of vipashyana
seeing wormhole: zazen
shadow wormhole: point of realisation
streets wormhole: wha’
uncle wormhole: Michael Redford: // someone missing
wind & windows 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
wood wormhole: again

 

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duck calls

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2012, 5*, childhood, dew, duck, field, garden, green, mist, morning, Ramsden Heath, sound, trees

 

 

 

                      in the early morning
                      the ground seemed frozen
                      but it was the shifting dew-mist

                      shh – duck calls

                      from behind the dark trees
                      along the bottom of the garden
                      where the fields and water were

 

 

 

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

childhood & trees wormhole: the spectre
field wormhole: train journey
garden wormhole: ‘across the flat meadow …’
green wormhole: bench / corner of Cantwell Road / and Eglinton Hill
mist & morning wormhole: The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get (1973) – tribute
Ramsden Heath wormhole: radio
sound wormhole: double glazing

 

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radio

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2012, 5*, black, doors, green, portrait, radio, Ramsden Heath, white, wood

 

 

 

                                                                   radio

                                   in one of the outhouses
                                   the green paint wooden door
                                   opened easily when the metal latch
                                   was raised – clack –

                                   petrol-crystal smell
                                   coal bunker dark

                                              adjust
                                              stay

                                   tools hung white-washed wall
                                   rake Wellington boots tea-box

                                   and that was Grandad’s radio
                                   handsome box walnut knots
                                   polished mesh cloth speaker
                                   onoff volume tuner tick-marks
                                   along different levels of realities

                                              unplugged
                                              no electricity
                                              in the outhouses

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: your gold teeth
doors wormhole: winter / weeks
green wormhole: ‘across the flat meadow …’
radio & Ramsden Heath wormhole: Grandad / Redford
white wormhole: the Joker’s face
wood wormhole: one mirror

 

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Grandad / Redford

17 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2011, 5*, being, brown, childhood, divorce, family, father, growth, history, jazz, radio, Ramsden Heath, son, war

 

 

 

                                Grandad
                                Redford

                      did ‘classified’ work
                                during the war
                      he worked 12 hour shifts
                                but found time to play
                                with his kids
                      what he achieved was
                                secret
                      but what he gave was
                                duty to his family

                      he left few things in the
                                world
                      his gun his radio
                                his workshop
                      from a time that was
                                brown and textured

                      and his son who feigned
                                in the world
                                but breathed another
                                as he drew on his pipe
                      and left his family
                                to start another

                      he never did play in jazz clubs
                                I never could be
                                part of his new world

                      and my achievement in this life
                                will be to just be
                                what I am in this world compassionately
                                not aloof from this world arrogantly

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: gift
brown wormhole: 1970 // just now
childhood & Ramsden Heath wormhole: boots on / for a walk
divorce wormhole: from my childhood
family wormhole: in the gem shop / on the pier
father wormhole: chartless …
history wormhole: Being There (1979)
radio wormhole: dawn
war wormhole: ‘after the war …’

 

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boots on / for a walk

17 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 2011, 4*, birch, childhood, clouds, grey, oak, Ramsden Heath, wind

 

 

 

                                              boots on
                                              for a walk

                                grey clouds like a valley
                                behind the walls of oak

                                but only the birch
                                leaning and recovering
                                in the wind

 

 

 

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

a scene from >>> Ramsden Heath
birch wormhole: house / opposite
childhood & Ramsden Heath wormhole: ‘across the flat meadow …’
clouds wormhole: once
grey wormhole: handsome
oak wormhole: all at / once
valley wormhole: black plimsolls / tights and cords
wind wormhole: smalltown / Derbyshire

 

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