Tags
1967, 2019, 8*, abandonment, alcove, being, birds, blue, books, breeze, Dad, Eglinton Hill, evening, garden, head, identity, life, meaning, openness, place, purpose, room, shoulders, skirting board, sky, son, sound, standing, text, time, trees, Victorian houses, weight, windows
threshold to behold
having persistently interrogated every alcove
and skirting and sash-window of every room
he could possibly have been in
for any lead to any whereabouts, to even a
chalk-outline, of how to be (beyond the breath
of standing next to him in the breezy garden) –
they were so well-moulded, fitted at perfect
right angle, pulleys holding the weight just right
to open, surely they would know – nothing,
(or were they just too arcane to decode),
the son stood before the bookshelves – how
was it, now – legs not really astride but anyhow,
(dangling, even), but head and shoulders alert,
scanning the spines, weighing what each had
to offer to respective places and times in the
whole of a life, ah, this is the one – plucked –
from the top of the spine, reached down; felt
their weight, now, opened boarded covers
(sound of crease), open at random (must of
decades), what does the text say when
eavesdropped unaware, has it sense, could I inhabit
that sense enough to see what to do, to breathe
what to be – birds take flight into the turning deep blue
above evening trees
my father left his family on my eighth birthday; I’m sure he didn’t plan in that way, but that’s the day he happened to come home late again and confess that he’d been seeing someone else – I played with my new cars behind the sofa and listened to him leave, I didn’t look up so much as stare at the shape of the room as if noticing for the first time in the Victorian house on the hill where we lived; ‘I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed’ (a no-prize to anyone who can name where these lyrics come from) looking for the direction I needed to be ‘the man of the house, now’ as someone said to me at the time; it’s only now I have retired that I realise there is no direction to go and that there is no man about the house other than saying makes it so; I still don’t look up, but am more and more sure that I don’t have to, now; still, all that browsing, plucking and hoarding over the years …
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
abandonment & Dad & life wormhole: my uncomfortable life
being wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
blue & trees wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
books wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
breeze wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
Eglinton Hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
evening & time & windows wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
garden wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
identity wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
meaning wormhole: the old man;
openness wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
sky wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
sound wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
Victorian houses wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
