• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • 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
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
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    • William Carlos Williams
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  • wormholes

mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: rock

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley

24 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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7*, black, bracken, brother, curtains, dark, doors, evacuation, eyes, faces, hills, horizon, house, listening, London, morning, opening, ponies, rock, rooks, sky, sleep, sound, streets, sun, time, truck, valley, Wales, water, wheel, wind, windows, World War

valley

we were evacuated during the war
from London to the Rhonda Valley
it was dark when we arrived

the sound of rocks woke me in the morning
I hadn’t heard them before
in such numbers

I looked at the strip of sky between the curtains
while my brother slept
a small cross a wooden chest minutes

ticked …
until he moved eyes already open
then two faces at the window gaping at bare hills

and one house
with three ponies in the paddock manes in the sun;
downhill was a black tower holding enormous wheels black

and then cables down to
a blacked hut and trucks and shacks dotted everywhere black
save the rail lines; shuntings

between the constant hisss, psssh
hooves in the street below pulling a float
‘cark’ of rooks above;

in time
doors opened: crystal streams before
racing the bracken which dipped and waved out to the next horizons

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

 

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

black & faces & hills & house & London & morning & sleep & valley & windows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
curtains wormhole: at Kreukenhof
doors wormhole: there will be ovations
eyes & wind wormhole: breakfast
horizon wormhole: Candaka
listening wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
sky wormhole: blue sky high
sound & water wormhole: psssssh
streets wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
sun wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
time wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

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beauty, bedroom, black, blue, bracken, brass, breakfast, brother, brown, clouds, colliery, cows, curtains, evacuation, eyes, faces, farm, fields, freedom, friends, grass, green, grey, hedge, hills, horizon, horses, house, identity, kitchen, London, loneliness, love, Michael J Redford, morning, mother, mountains, passing, ponies, rock, roof, rooks, running, sadness, sheep, sky, sleep, smell, sound, steam, stone, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, travelling, valley, village, Wales, walls, waves, wind, windows, winter, World War, yellow

The Valley

My first memory of Wales is an aural one.   My brother and I were evacuated during the war and arrived late at night in Trelewis, a little mining village by the Rhonda Valley.   It was too dark to see anything of our surroundings, not that we cared much anyway for the winter’s journey had made us far too tired.

It was the sound of rocks that woke me early the following morning.   Having always lived in London, I had rarely heard their raucous tones, certainly not in such great numbers.   I could see from a narrow strip of sky between the curtains that the clouds of the previous day had been swept away.   At first I was undecided as to whether the colour of the sky was grey or a pale, misty blue, but as the minutes ticked by, it became evident that the heavens were clear.   I glanced across at my brother in the next bed.   He was still and fast asleep.   Without moving my head I took in the details of the room that had come to light.   There was a small wooden cross on the wall opposite and behind the door a small cupboard where, presumably, we were to keep our clothes and the few toys we had bought with us.   Beneath the window was a long wooden chest draped with a green satin runner, the secrets of which we were to discover later.   Apart from the two beds in which my brother and I were sleeping, there were no other items of furniture in the room.

I glanced at the bed beside me once more and again at the curtained window.   How desperate I was to see what lay beyond.   Should I wake my brother or should I let him sleep?   The minutes ticked slowly by.   Then slowly he turned over towards me.   His eyes were open – he too had been looking at the window.   Alan and I had always been very close as brothers, often both doing the same thing simultaneously, each seeming to know what the other is about to do.   Our eyes met for a brief second and without a word being spoken, we slid from our beds and crossed to the window.   Had an observer been looking at the rear of 9 Richards Terrace at seven o’clock that crisp winter’s morn, he would have seen the curtains slowly part and two small faces peer out with large apprehensive eyes.

We were almost on a level with the hills opposite.   In this part of the country the Welsh mountains do not present a dramatic outline to the sky; here, they are soft and rolling, rather like the South Downs on a much larger scale.   The hills were quite bare, void of trees, fields and hedgerows, and only one house stood there, square and lonely.   A paddock surrounded by a dry stone wall contained three ponies that tossed their heads in the early morning sun.   One wall of the paddock continued down into the valley to disappear behind a black, tower-like structure topped by two of the most enormous wheels I had ever seen.   From these, thick black cables ran down into a blackened building at the rear.   Everything was black.   The ground, over which ran a network of miniature railway lines and trucks was black; all buildings, shacks and huts dotted about were black; blackness was heaped everywhere.

Now we were conscious of other noises.   The distant rattle of shunting trucks and a continuous hissing sound of escaping steam.   Then the faint clip-clop of horses’ hooves became noticeable from the High Street below, and there appeared for a brief second between the houses a yellow float laden with clanking milk churns pulled by a big brown horse.   The bare hills, the colliery, the grey slate roofs of the village below and the screech of the rooks above, stirred within us a mixture of emotions, emotions that encompassed apprehension, expectation, excitement, loneliness, sadness; and even today, whenever I hear rooks calling on a winter’s morn, whenever I hear the rattle of the shunter’s yard or the sound of newly-shod hooves upon a hard road, I am back once more in Trelewis.   But no longer does loneliness feature in the memory now for I have many dear friends there.   No more apprehension or sadness, for the Welsh hills have afforded me much happiness and security, and beauty can now be seen in that which at one time appeared ugly.   Now, the memory is warm with affection for those sincere people and there is a longing to be among those stony, fern-covered hills once more.

As we descended the stairs later that morning for breakfast, the smell of polish was evident.   Everything shone.   The lino on the stairs had a shine so deep that I grasped the bannister tightly for support for fear that I should slip, and the brass fender in the living room glowed with the intensity of the sun.   The aroma of breakfast sizzling on the big black hob was wafted through the kitchen door together with the aroma of a hitherto unknown delicacy called a Welsh Cake.

The people in that remote little mining village threw open their doors and welcomed us into their houses.   Such was their nature that we, who could justly be called ‘foreigners’, became in a very short time, part of them and their community.   How many London mothers, I wonder, have cause to be grateful for the care and love lavished on their offspring by strangers in a far-off country.

The countryside behind the village differed from the great hills on the other side of the valley.   Here, there were dairy farms.   Hedgerows bound in small fields and cows grazed to the accompaniment of pure crystal streams that tumbled from the mountains further up the valley.   It is in these surroundings I feel sure, that I first became aware of the beauty around me.   I became conscious of a physical and mental freedom that could not exist in London.   Here, one could be alone, one could run and jump and roll in the grass without fear of reprisal, and high upon Wineberry Mountain on the other side of the valley, one could race the winds for miles before a fence or even a dry stone wall would be encountered.   Here on the heights, one can shout with full voice, yet it will be lost upon the wind.   Only a stray sheep will turn its head and the bracken will dip and ripple to the horizon like waves upon the sea.   Up here the ceaseless wind is the ethereal reincarnation of Dionysus, urging one to drink from him and become drunk with freedom.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

beauty & clouds & grey & hedge & passing & smell & valley wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
bedroom wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
black & horizon wormhole: slight sneer
blue & faces wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
curtains wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
eyes & love wormhole: light of all interaction
green wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
house wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
identity & wind wormhole: c’mon – keep up
kitchen wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: {reading right to left}
morning & sky wormhole: then
mother wormhole: in deed
roof & windows wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
sleep & time wormhole: looking for the right exit
sound wormhole: window
stone & sun wormhole: boiled spangle with soft centre
travelling wormhole: travelling / back
walls wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
waves wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019
yellow wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

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SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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'scape, 1917, 7*, anchor, angle, birds, blue, branches, buds, concentration, convergence, desire, disappearance, energy, erect, flying, grey, ground, holding, orange, passing, red, right, rock, sky, Spring, sun, tap root, trees, twigs, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING STRAINS

                In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                crowded erect with desire against
                the sky–
                            tense blue-grey twigs
                slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
                them in–

                            two blue-grey birds chasing
                a third struggle in circles, angles,
                swift convergings to a point that bursts
                instantly!

                            Vibrant bowing limbs
                pull downward, sucking in the sky
                that bulges from behind, plastering itself
                against them in packed rifts, rock blue
                and dirty orange!

                                                                                But–
                (Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
                the blinding and red-edged sun-blur–
                creeping energy, concentrated
                counterforce – welds sky, buds, trees,
                rivets them in one puckering hold!
                Sticks through! Pulls the whole
                counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
                locks even the opaque, not yet defined
                ground in a terrific drag that is
                loosening the very tap-roots!

                On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
                at full cry! Now they are
                flung outward and up – disappearing suddenly!

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the cacophany of a single moment – all instruments loosening-up, scaling, tensing, waiting for the grand inaugural middle ‘C’ – all held together in a fidgety bag; the shabby audacity of this piece – ‘let’s not just have vignettes, let’s also have local, tectonic landscapes’ – made my young eyes work, I had to read it several times successively to hold together all the strands, and then he lets me off, I finally ‘got’ the three birds disappearing … you don’t hold it all together, you don’t; there’s no need to; William Carlos Williams was a crafty master

 

 

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

birds wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
blue wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
branches & sky wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
orange wormhole: I
passing wormhole: tram
red wormhole: Bridgnorth
Spring wormhole: city streets
sun & trees & William Carlos Williams wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

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volcanic rock

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2014, 4*, clouds, Gran Canaria, haiku, hills, pine, rock, valley, water

                                                volcanic rock

                             pines almost reach
                the tops of the hills opposite
                   sip water from clouds

 

 

 

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

clouds & haiku[esque] wormhole: pink and orange
hills wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
pine & valley wormhole: garden
water wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let

 

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pink and orange

16 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2014, 3*, bougainvillea, clouds, Gran Canaria, haiku, orange, pink, rock

                                                pink and orange

                                bougainvillea
                clouded refreshing around
                   seamed-rock resort

 

 

 

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

clouds wormhole: ‘avenue of wraggled gorse tops …’
haiku[esque] wormhole: holiday
orange wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
pink wormhole: over-pink cagoule

 

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every step I take

16 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2013, 6*, awareness, climbing, dawn, doors, grey, hope, life, living, nausea, ochre, rock, seeing, step, walking, walls

                there is a wall before me
                gets higher as I walk towards it
                so wide that I cannot turn my head
                footings deep of the rock on which I stand

                I thought there was a door once
                but I can never see where I want to
                I thought to climb it for there was a dawn which crept along its
                battlements but it is featureless it silently radiates grey with ochre stains of nausea

                hopeless
                but that I have come such a long way
                I shall just have to walk through it without
                knowing where to go sure only of every step I take

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
dawn wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
doors & walls wormhole: such such potential
grey wormhole: ‘avenue of wraggled gorse tops …’
life wormhole: divergent // direction
living wormhole: do I
ochre wormhole: “I / am Spartacus”
seeing wormhole: the goldilocks stance
walking wormhole: step

 

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1967

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1967, 2014, 5*, Burt Bacharach, desert, Dionne Warwick, evening, London, mauve, orange, prayer, purple, rock, sand, smell, sound, white

                                1967

                                one early
                                evening
                                in London
                                amid the
                                fug of
                                cabbage
                                and the
                                clack of
                                cleared
                                plates

                the deep orange sand was turning purple
                and the piled rocks remained white and mauve

                                in the
                                desert

 

reaching both from within, and through: I say a little prayer by Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach

 

 

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

Burt Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1964
evening wormhole: beepbeep
London & smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
mauve wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
orange wormhole: magnificent salad
purple wormhole: the 19th century
sound wormhole: embodying
white wormhole: con / sum / mate

 

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impressionism

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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Tags

'scape, 1878, 1880, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1901, 1935, 19th century, 2015, 20th century, appearance, beer, being, blue, cafe, chair, cypress, decision, doors, Edouard Manet, Edouard Vuillard, emerald, field, garden, glasses, hair, impressionism, leaf, living, looking, mass, passing, Paul Cezanne, people, photograph, posture, profile, rock, shadow, skyline, sound, speech, survival, turquoise, van Gogh, view, writing

 

 

 

                      impressionism

                      when it appeared that being
                      took more than looking
                      to survive in grander scale

La Terrasse at Vasouy Edouard Vuillard

                      people froze in pose of living
                      and, standing, turned from the
                      emerald skyline and blue of leaf

                      until the ‘chirrup’-click
                      fit to portrait – maybe landscape –
                      enlarged, reduced (and whopaintedthis ‘click’ gottit) of

                      chair standing but not on
                      the tiles by the
                      turquoise door blue – wassnext! – standing

                      right in front (of the view
                      looking to be written on a notepad) right there
                      to one side of the frame in profile, ‘like I was …’

                      looking in ‘ready’ chirrup – then
                                                                      nudged
                      passing out of everyone’s way – ‘sorry!’

                      glasses on the head before
                      wheatfield with cypresses, hennaered
                      hair before rock shadows, and

                      tell me, is it the transluscent beer
                      or the backward look to another order
                      the point in the corner of the café-concert?

 

witnessed between elbows at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, 030515: La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden, Edouard Vuillard, 1901, reworked 1935; Van Gogh’s Chair, Vincent van Gogh, 1888; A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, Vincent van Gogh, 1889; Hillside in Provence, Paul Cézanne, about 1890-2; Corner of a Café-Concert, Edouard Manet, probably 1878-80

 

 

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

20th century & sound wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
being wormhole: dash
blue wormhole: Jon
doors wormhole: through
field wormhole: keep the light off
garden wormhole: the open window
glasses wormhole: new garden
hair & shadow wormhole: 1964
living & skyline wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
looking & posture wormhole: and that’s where I are
passing wormhole: 1963
people & writing wormhole: well,
speech wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12

 

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just

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

'scape, 1987, 3*, air, evening, horsefly, rock, storm, windows

 

 

 

                                just

                as the rock rolled to a stop
                the horsefly landed on it

                in the evening
                waiting for the storm
                a puff of air came in
                through the window

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: ‘red ink in the air …’
evening wormhole: child
storm wormhole: stormy sky
windows wormhole: loud music

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • 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
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

recent leaks …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'in my car I pass...'
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky

category sky

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tag skyline

'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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