• 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
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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: roots

looking hard enough

28 Saturday Dec 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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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

 

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SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

03 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1923, 5*, birth, blue, brown, bushes, clouds, fields, grass, growth, hospital, leaves, purple, red, roads, roots, Spring, trees, water, weeds, William Carlos Williams, wind

                                SPRING AND ALL

                By the road to the contagious hospital
                under the surge of the blue
                mottled clouds driven from the
                northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
                waste of broad, muddy fields
                brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

                patches of standing water
                the scattering of tall trees

                All along the road the reddish
                purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
                stuff of bushes and small trees
                with dead, brown leaves under them
                leafless vines –

                Lifeless in appearence, sluggish
                dazed spring approaches –

                They enter the new world naked,
                cold, uncertain of all
                save that they enter. All about them
                the cold, familiar wind –

                Now the grass, tomorrow
                the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

                One by one objects are defined –
                It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

                But now the stark dignity of
                entrance – Still, the profound change
                had come upon them: rooted, they
                grip down and begin to awaken

from Spring and All, 1923, from which Paul Mariani’s excellent biography of William Carlos Williams got its name “A New World Naked”; being is to break and contrast, it is primordial but also cyclical, WCW doesn’t bother with the cosmic, he deals in twigs

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
leaves & Spring & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
purple wormhole: … the underleaves show
red & William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
roads wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
wind wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion

11 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2016, contact, currents, dark, diagram, floating, growth, identity, kiss, knowledge, life, light, London, movement, opening, pattern, perspective, petals, roots, soil, stanza, surface, swimming, the Boats of Vallisneria, uncle, vallisneria, waiting, war, water, waves, work, writing

 

 

 

                                introdepthion

                                filigree roots dissimulate the soil
                                at the bottom of shallow waters
                                (like a diagram – no contact, with
                                 sheath of border); a stalk will grow

                                through water, sure twists towards
                                the light; on the surface petals will
                                open wide without shame and wait
                                for the floret to rise from the bract

                                then release just three boats for to
                                float the potent cargo where the
                                movement of water will hazard the
                                inexorable kiss; but there is no

                                morphology or physiology of
                                vallisneria, only certain quest from
                                darkness to light, and the surface-
                                knowledge retrieved back; I am

                                a Londoner born through war to
                                work the land to look for pattern in
                                life to make, trusting it is there to
                                swim through, but lost in currents

                                to and `fro with only adventitious
                                and god-like perspective when I
                                contemplate in four-line stanza …
                                sometimes

 

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

 

 

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

1967 & life & uncle & work wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
identity & knowledge & light & London & water & writing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
waiting wormhole: and that’s where I are
war wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
waves wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20

 

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being in love – poewieview #26

14 Saturday May 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'scape, 1971, 2016, bardo, birth, blues, Bowie, clouds, desert, emptiness, family, green, grey, home, horizon, ineffable, lemon, life, lifetimes, love, mauve, mist, mountain, orange, rebirth, roots, sky, smoke, sound, speech, steel, travelling, voices, whisper

                                the wide wide landscape and the family tree
                                are just the same when found through mist;

                                blues rising from the homestead chimney
                                in the grey and green glade of, everwhere;

                                then everything stepped up over the far
                                mountains mauve of orange horizon

                                filled the sky to cross the desert in a
                                single bound; whispered sweet nothing

                                into my ear with heightened register as
                                the clouds pointed unutterably across

                                the lemon-steel sky, far too wide and grey
                                and blue to close my mouth, over;

                                I’ll have to levitate, ascend above the roots
                                of no return – tug-snapping, pull-holding snap –

                                you could see, there then, that this was not
                                about love this was all about being in love

 

just close your eyes: Lightning Frightening, 1971; Moonage Daydream, 1971

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

1971 & Bowie wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25
clouds wormhole: nothing to say
emptiness & lifetimes & sky & speech wormhole: too late:
family wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
green & grey & horizon & life wormhole: furl-reach
lemon wormhole: ‘went up to London and what did I see; …’ – poewieview #7
love wormhole: true nature
mauve wormhole: mauve
mist wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
orange wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
sound wormhole: fine
travelling wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
voices wormhole: 1965

 

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I will eventually drift tectonic

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2014, 6*, breathing, gorge, grey, horizon, identity, letting go, path, realisation, roots, sea, sitting, stone

 

 

 

          I realised
I am a peninsula
                     when I could see nothing
          but grey sea
unvolved to every horizon
                     except the rocky path I had trod behind me
          to stand
          where I am
                     no matter

          I sit and
          in every
          hundred
          breaths I breathe out
and let settle
          a chip of stone
          a hair from root
                     somewhere
anywhere
          it doesn’t matter
and like the pin from the anvil*
          the gorge from the birdwing*
                     I will eventually drift tectonic
          whether I
separate from the mainland
          or not

 

* the time it takes to make a fine pin from an anvil using a soft blue ribbon; the time it takes to make a gorge from a mythical bird which returns to its nest once every hundred years, angles sharply to reach its nest, and in so doing brushes the side of the mountain that once was there with the tips of its wing … are Buddhist ways of saying ‘such a long time that you may as well not have any targets or hopes about the project, it will happen in its own sweet time by itself as long as you keep doing your part

 

 

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

breathing wormhole: I find / you find your bones / on the outbreath
grey wormhole: no hat
horizon wormhole: clouds
identity wormhole: 1963
letting go wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
path wormhole: tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again
realisation wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
sea wormhole: 1963
sitting wormhole: my fidgety self
stone wormhole: sounds // suddenly / stop

 

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the en-gentled / end of a wan / writing retreat

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

'scape, 2014, 6*, ambition, avoidance, awareness, being, birds, birdsong, branches, comfort, courage, ground, groundlessness, growth, honesty, identity, letting go, passing, reading, retreat, roots, sitting, trees, wind, Woodbrooke, writing

 

 

 

                                              the en-gentled
                                              end of a wan
                                              writing retreat

                                              OK
                                I didn’t write anything
I could write (because I think I’m clever with words and could wave and flurry about in leans and reaches quite beautifully
                but saying nothing
                really in the end)

                                              but
                                there is something I’m not facing
something that would root me deep in the ground that I reach from that all the movement would strengthen
                to grow and
                eventually flower

                                              it is
                                the plan to write (and read and sit)
because I have travelled miles to be and committed space to see which has blown the idea
                clean like a branch
                crooked to the landscape

                                              when I
                                become awkward with sitting
(wafted with reading, empty when writing) I know (if I am honest) I have lost the courage
                to own the mismatch of
                my comfort and growth

                                              I could
                                write amidst the wind and lurch
perched cross-toed and angled to the branch gloriously noting gusts of word and thought
                and singing oblivious
                for all to see     maybe

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: what to do
being wormhole: ‘til death do us part
birds wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
branches wormhole: the edges of my reach
groundlessness wormhole: 1966
identity & letting go & sitting wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
passing & trees wormhole: prologue
reading wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
wind wormhole: … sshhh
writing wormhole: doing

 

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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
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  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

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

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