• 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
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: school

somehow

01 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2018, 5*, corridors, dream, embracing, forgiveness, head, looking, manager, now, retirement, school, speech, teaching, time, visit

                                somehow

                                I was visiting back
                where everything seemed to have changed
                                … ‘I’ll let Simon, here
                take you there’, I let
                                Simon know
                that I knew these corridors,
                                had worked here a time ago
                for quite a time …
                                and in the lunch hall
                the manager who’d watched it fall apart
                                in unmoveable brief
                was making her way
                                my way we,
                would have to meet, I looked down
                                to greet, she looked down
                to avoid hoping there
                                was anything else to notice,
                I took her head in my arms
                                because I think it’s
                OK to say “it’s OK”
                                now

 

 

 

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

dream wormhole: on facing the Have
looking & retirement & school wormhole: to let be
school wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
teaching wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
time wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

 

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to let be

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2018, 6*, allowing, being, change, echo, identity, letting go, looking, meaning, mist, Mum, prospect, purpose, putting out, retirement, rhetoric, school, shopping, space, streets, voice, wisdom

                                so I stopped working
                in an institution that couldn’t converse within its own rhetoric

                                couldn’t find a voice
                to navigate through all that drifting mist, and got lost, so I

                                no longer comb
                through shops and streets looking for echoes of a lost chord

                                that would weave
                my lives back together (couldn’t find it in all that looking),

                                all that
                                anxious putting-out
                and prospect, finding everything changed and nothing done,

                                and no monument
                that I was ever really there other than the space through

                                which the change
                happened glorious to allow, nothing to behold, everything

                                to be, a lot of
                history to let go – it was obstructive of me to try to solidify

                                there anyway,
                I should have stayed with the wisdom I inherited before

                                I was born,
                allowed the acceptance of my mother’s wisdom: to let be

 

 

 

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

being & identity & meaning wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
change wormholeL The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
echo wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
letting go wormhole: beguiled / desire
looking wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
mist wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
Mum wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
retirement wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
school & streets wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
space wormhole: space for probing thought

 

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THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1921, 5*, black, carnation, growth, hands, loneliness, looking, mouth, pink, school, schoolgirls, streets, time, walking, white, William Carlos Williams, yellow

                                THE LONELY STREET

                School is over. It is too hot
                to walk at ease. At ease
                in light frocks they walk the streets
                to while the time away.
                They have grown tall. They hold
                pink flames in their right hands.
                In white from head to foot,
                with sidelong, idle look–
                in yellow, floating stuff,
                black sash and stockings–
                touching their avid mouths
                with pink sugar on a stick–
                like a carnation each holds in her hand–
                they mount the lonely street.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

 

 

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

black wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
hands wormhole: we held cold hands
loneliness wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
looking & streets & time & walking wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
mouth wormhole: letting them go
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
school wormhole: how to teach
white wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

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how to teach

02 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

2018, 4*, Academy, accountability, betrayal, career, classroom, corridors, flowers, game, ideas, infrastructure, management, OFSTED, politics, Principal, requirement, resentment, school, special measures, teaching, teaching craft, thinking

                I suppose it’s not actually your fault
                that I brought to the point of fruition

                those things which you were required
                to require to keep your sorry arse out of

                special measures and you didn’t have the
                first or second idea what to do with them

                because you had long since moved on to
                eleventh and twelfth ideas playing

                some stupid game about infrastructure
                and accountability and completely forgot

                how to teach

 

about and dedicated to the former Principal of the former school (oh, sorry, Academy … what was I thinking) where I spent the whole 29 years of my former career which had calcified even as it flowered it’s most beautiful petals and eventually snapped under so much pretty weight and fell silent and unnoticed to the ground (and a good job too, it would have been a light, colourful mess in the corridor or the classroom); all of which I am required to not name if I’m to keep the paltry amount of money given for me to just shut up at long last; even after years of escape it seems I still bear a grudge – I really must find a honey pot for it somewhere …

 

 

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

career wormhole: I am not yet ready
game wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
management & teaching wormhole: new blue porsche
politics wormhole: looking / ridiculous
school wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
teaching craft wormhole: Structure & d y n a m i c
thinking wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron

 

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green and / luminant / to behold

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2012, 5*, balance, being, breakdown, coffee, communication, diagram, distance, ears, eyes, father, fingers, fracture, gardening, gathering, glass, green, holiday, home, listening, looking, luminous, people, school, service station, society, suit, summer, table, talking, terrace, thinking, thumb, woman, work

                                first day summer
                                holiday service station
                                100 miles away from
                                home thinking I
                                don’t fit in with the
                                way things
                                are played

                always looking
                                fractured
                                cracked
                                                from in at the side

                                green and
                                luminant
                                to behold

                                on the terrace
                                two businessmen sit
                                with ledgers coffees
                                the woman listening

                to one
                                                to the other

                                agreeing
                                the diagram
                                on the table

                                the elder sits back
                                dark suit large ear
                                plump throat tanned
                                skin upturned hand
                                emphasising gently
                                beside the diagram
                                thumb to fingers

                slightly gathering
                                like a father
                                                like a gardener

                                occasionally
                                talking with
                                still young
                                green eyes

 

 

 

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

balance wormhole: ‘still …’
breakdown & society wormhole: after all
coffee & woman & work wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
communication wormhole: Infantino KO
eyes wormhole: two profiles
father wormhole: looking ahead
glass & people wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
green & looking & thinking wormhole: Batgirl –
holiday wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
listening wormhole: buttercups
school wormhole: step
table wormhole: immeasurable love
talking wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?

 

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dream I // dream II

06 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2014, 3*, arrival, blue, experience, explanation, giving, hill, identity, looking, people, poem, reflection, retirement, school, tarmac, teaching, time, town, waking, windows

          dream I

    I had to get to school
    from the college halls
    in a town I didn’t know
    or what I was doing there

    I was already late
    but making my way
    past blue window reflections
    on honeycomb tarmac

    I realised I was going the
    wrong way up a hill people looking
    at me in my teacher’s clothes they
    knew the school is not here

    I am in an area I do not know
    so I go back down the hill
    trying to show that I know
    what I am doing I can see

    the whole town spread out
    like a city the different areas
    the school is there somewhere
    and I need to get myself there

and yet woken up now I’m not so sure I do

          dream II

    my chance to teach
    I explain everything

with little clever phrases like poems
    but each time

    I have to explain yet further
    taking hours, not

    holding them I gave of my
    of my own experience but it wasn’t

    theirs, they started leaving
    before I could conclude

retired now I’m not sure I ever arrived

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: pass and / fro
giving wormhole: six paramitas
identity wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
looking wormhole: over-pink cagoule
people wormhole: memorial
retirement wormhole: Virginia
school wormhole: step
teaching wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
time wormhole: tragic and archival
windows wormhole: windows // and balconies

 

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step

01 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2013, 4*, being, class, life, living, movement, pattern, school, shift, step, teaching, walking, watching, waves, wind, woodland

                walk into the school and see
                the patterns and movements

                walk into the class and see the
                waves and shifts as if watching

                woodland in the winds and
                walk through minding your next

                step

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
life wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
living wormhole: slow enough / to have love
school wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
teaching wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
walking wormhole: too greedy
waves wormhole: 20th century
wind wormhole: within

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

'scape, 1967, 5*, Atlantic, birdsong, birth, black, blackbird, blue, branches, brick, countryside, death, echo, elm, eyes, fields, flower, garden, green, Greenwich, grey, hate, hills, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, May, Michael J Redford, morning, pastel, pigs, pink, rain, red, rhythm, school, silence, sky, snow, sound, sparrows, stillness, summer, sun, swifts, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, vertical, village, walls, white, wind, windows, winter, woodland, world, yellow

Snow

There is a great expectancy in waiting for the snow to begin.   Sometimes the snow comes with the wind when the trees are flailing and the Ruddock ruffles his breath beneath the trembling ivy.   Then, the contours of the land become accentuated, blackened on the leeward side to eye-shocking contrast to the whiteness on each other.   Each iron furrow stands in stark relief, a symbol of winter’s Herculean grip.   And where the skimming flakes have hurled themselves upon the wooded hills, each twig upon every branch, each branch upon every tree, hugs close a spectral image and hazel coppices become an abstraction of diverging verticals.

Sometimes however, the snow comes upon us unheralded; its approach is silent; no movement is seen among the fields or felt upon the cheek.   Somewhere below, the dormouse sleeps, and as the sparrow waits in the hedge I find myself walking with reverent steps as if, when in a house of worship, one feels the presence of the graven saints.   Eventually I must pause in my tracks, feeling guilty of the very movement of my limbs when all else is still; and in the greyness of the sky there is but the faintest suggestion of pink.   On a woodland bank the adventurous lesser periwinkle displays a solitary blue flower and from the old red-brick garden wall of the big house on the hill, the ivy casts down a leaf that slips rhythmically from side to side like the baton of the music teacher in the village school below.   The leaf touches the ground and a snowflake touches the cheek.   The eye is directed from the sky to the black background of the woods and a million flakes are seen; a million pieces of perfection yet each one different to the other.   In the classroom below thirty pairs of wide eyes turn to the window and the rising undercurrent of excitement is checked by the teacher’s baton.   I would indeed be guilty of a grave hypocrisy if I were to say that only young hearts flutter with excitement at this particular moment, for I too have never outgrown my love for the snow and look forward to the white, silent world to come.

Of course, snow brings with it its hardships as do the frosts, the winds and the rains.   They bring discomfort and sometimes death to the aged, the sick and to the wildlife about us.   But then so do the searing hot summers that parch the earth and lay heavy upon the fevered brow.   Always there is something inimical to or destructive of life, yet at the same time and in many cases because of it, life is somehow strengthened.   I remember how uneasy I once felt when harrowing a field of oats for the very first time.   The teeth of the harrow clawed at the tender green shoots, breaking and bruising them, threatening to tear them bodily from the soil.   Had I misunderstood my employer’s instructions? Was this really what he wanted me to do?   And yet two months later, despite its apparent destruction, there stood before me a field of rippling, luscious green.   If we were to hate all things that displayed an ugly side, there would be nothing left in the world to love.

This morning the window panes were covered with acanthus and the sun was a flat yellow disc that could be viewed without hurt to the eye.   The mist seemed to smooth the scene into a two dimensional pasteboard picture which gave the impression that I could reach out and touch the pastel blue hills across the valley.   I donned an additional thick-knitted woollen jersey, pulled on my gumboots and gloves and stepped from the warm steamy kitchen into the sparkling garden.   The brilliance and frostiness of the air sent the blood racing to my cheeks and my ears began to tingle.   In the piggery at the bottom of the garden, a mother sow with her nine three week old piglets were taking the air.   The little ‘piggles’ as they were sometimes called in this area, were racing around with their snouts down, like little pink snow ploughs forging furrows in the frost encrusted snow.   As I approached, their heads jerked up and, like tiny pink statues, they eyed me for a brief second before turning on their heels and hurtling across the piggery barking (or were they laughing) at the morning sun.   The impression of nudity that young piglets must give must be seen to be believed, and the sight of these nude little bodies coursing through the snow set me shivering.   I once heard of a sow who, in preference to the warm, dry sty supplied by her human master, built her nest in the corner of a field, and nothing on earth would induce her to return to the comfort of the ‘maternity’ ward.   Early the following, bitterly cold, morning, she was found burrowed deeply within her nest with an army of piglets lined up at the milk bar with the most ridiculous expressions of contentment upon their faces.   Not ten feet distant, a robin alighted on the solid water of the cattle trough and proclaimed the good news to the world.

However, it was too cold to stand watching the antics of these endearing little creatures (I dare not think of the hours wasted in this way during the warmer days) so I entered the lane that led to the fields.   The dull klunk klunk of axe striking wood came to my ears and I saw through a gap in the snow-bound hedge the rhythmic rise and fall of my neighbour’s arm as he stooped over a pile of logs.   The sound bounced across the fields to the woods and back again with such clarity, that I half expected the echo to continue as he laid his axe aside.   He saw me, nodded at me and said, “Morning”.   I nodded at him.   “Morning”.

The countryman has an almost psycho-analytic method of extracting information from the unwary traveller.   By a few pointed remarks or statements he finds out all he wants to know without having asked a single question.   Having lived in the countryside for half my life, I have developed to a lesser degree the same technique.   I did verbal battle with him for five minutes but my defences began to crumble when he said, “Better watch that plank over the stream, bound to be slippery with all that frost on it.”

“I expect it is,” I said, “Still, the tread of these boots is almost new.”

Now he knew where I was going, for the plank in question bridged the stream that ran along the north side of the woods.

“Surprising how much longer it takes to get across country when there’s frost and snow about.”   He peered at me from the corners of his eyes.   “Best get a move on or else you’ll be late.”

I gave in.

“That’s true, but then I’m only out for a stroll.”

Questioning my sanity, he returned to his chopping and I to my walk.

It has often been said by the townsman (although having spent most of my childhood in the grimy streets of Greenwich I no longer regard myself as a townsman) that the countryside is ‘all very well’ in summer, but ‘muddy, dismal and uninteresting’ in winter.   Muddy it may well be, but it is clean mud, untainted by diesel oil, slime and soot.   As for being dismal, are they so blind they cannot see the beauty in a curtain of falling rain brushing the distant hills, or hear the music of a million drops of water among the shining leaves or smell the fragrance of freshly dampened earth?   Can they not see the beauty that I see now, of glistening white lacework of the frosted elms against a crystal clear sky, and undulating fields of virgin snow, pure and smooth, a countenance of innocence that has yet to bear the mark of man’s impropriety?

In the days of winter when the hedgerows are empty and the ditches and river banks laid bare, one can discover more easily the badger’s sett or the otter’s holt.   One is able to make a mental note of where the blackbird is likely to build his nest; perhaps the disused nest of a song thrush now exposed by the skeletal hedge will eventually house the spotted white eggs of the blue tit in the warm days of May to come.   Close scrutiny of tree and bush will reveal a host of living green buds wrapped tightly in their protective coats; life is expanding beneath the frozen ground, straining to burst forth, and even as the blackbird sings, the lambs are falling.   The countryside in winter is not dead; there is life, vibrant and pulsing as the blood in one’s veins.   It is all around, above one’s head and below one’s feet.   It is not winter that dispels life, but life that dispels winter.   The immigrant swift brings with it the warm southern winds and life throughout the land erupts, forcing the icy blasts, the snows and the frosts into the North Atlantic.   And after all, without winter, there would be no spring.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

black & talking wormhole: returning home handsome
blackbird & echo & fields wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
blue & rain & sky wormhole: the too big moon
branches & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
death & white wormhole: the 19th century
eyes & morning & sun wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
garden wormhole: what life went on
green & grey & life & red & silence & walls & windows wormhole: did I get old?
hills wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
kitchen & school wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
love & sound wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
pink wormhole: languidly close the portal
snow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
sparrows wormhole: tired
stillness wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
trees wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
valley wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
winter wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
world wormhole: let it all go
yellow wormhole: magnificent salad

 

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hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1992, black, blue, brown, cave, cliff, clothes, coat, doors, echo, eyes, falling, green, grey, groundlessness, growth, home, house, identity, Joe, kitchen, light, mauve, mist, mother, path, pink, planet, pointlessness, quotidian, red, school, searching, silence, sky, sound, story, streets, tea, time, voices, waves, world, wormhole, yellow

every day David would come home from school, and his mum would ask him how it went and he would say it was fine although he always wondered to himself what it would be like if he had a day at school which was worthwhile, and whether he would notice it if it happened; then he would have a cup of tea which his mum made him and he would do a hundred other similar things until he went to bed that night; and he wondered why it was that he had been doing this for years without any change when he noticed that the path leading to his front door didn’t in fact lead to his front door anymore but ownwards like a cliff-path, under the house and curling away into what seemed like a great underground cavern which was so big that it was like a world and the celing was so high that it seemed like a sky, although you could see it; his house was just there on a ledge on the side of a huge cliff, the street where he lived just wasn’t there, anymore; “do you want a cup of tea, luvvey?” sang his Mum from the kitchen window; “in a minute, Mum, I’m a little, busy, at the moment, I’m looking for the town where I used to live”; “OK, dear, but don’t stay out too long”; “Aaaaaaaargh!!!” said David, for quite a few minutes when he missed his footing on a pebble and fell over the edge of the path and down, a surprisingly long way without bumping into the side of the cliff at all, when he started realising that it was pointless – and a little silly really – him saying “Aaaaargh” when there was no one in possible sight anywhere around in this huge cave, what was the point, in saying anything?, so he stopped, but, as he looked below him, he could see, gradually, more clearly, a great blueness coming into sight as he fell, as if clearing through mist, with green patches, here and there, and yellow and grey streaks, and some more waves if you really looked; and David began thinking how pointless it was to describe the sea as “blue” when if you really looked you could see all sorts of colours in it, and he set himself the challenge of trying to find, really different colours that you wouldn’t expect to find in the sea, and after a while – as he fell and fell for ages as if he had jumped from an aeroplane – he saw a pink which quickly turned into a bit of red then mauve then blue and then the sleeve of the old man shifted as he took the pot off the fire to serve up the tea and the colours of his coat changed again in the half-light so that David couldn’t tell if it was black or brown or blue, anyway he was looking forward to his tea because it smelt richer and thicker than he had noticed it before but the man wasn’t offering him any and poured himself a cup only, besides David noticed that the man was growing larger but that the room wasn’t getting cramped by him; the man was now, probably, fifty feet tall and the sounds of his moving coat and his supping of the tea were starting to sound echoey; oh, no, it was David! he seemed to be shrinking, faster and faster, his clothes had long since ceased to be on him but around him and then he was lost in a huge valley between his shirt collar and the shoulder of his shirt and then there was a small hole at his feet which grew quickly so that he clung to one side of it to stop himself falling in but the edge of the hole became thicker and flatter so that it was smooth and there was nothing more to hold onto, so he wasn’t holding anymore, and he expected himself to be falling, but everything around him just seemed to be going away from him in all directions into blackness, when from out from nothing something seemed to come towards him, huge, with great speed, that he expected it to make a great rushing sound but it didn’t, it was totally silent, it was a planet, a planet so big that it make his legs wobble, coming straight for him, getting larger and larger so that it filled everywhere around him but it never seemed to hit, so he closed his eyes; after a while he told himself that he may as well see the End so he opened his eyes and the planet was gone, there were just dancing lights zipping round and round him so quickly that if he looked back along where they came from they would whip round so quick that he would see them a hundred times every inch he moved his eyes and eventually they went so fast he could just see bands of light surrounding him; as he travelled toward the centre, and the front door opened, the sun, which was low and had caught in the glass in the door and sent a dazzling piece of light straight into his eye, whizzed halfway around the horizon and disappeared behind some trees and the houses opposite and his Mum’s face, “hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?”

 

written for my eldest child when he was young

 

 

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

black & mother wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
blue & eyes & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
brown & echo & red & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
doors wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
green & mist & sound & voices wormhole: 1967
grey & kitchen wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
groundlessness & pointlessness wormhole: Jericho
house wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity & world wormhole: lonely and free
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
mauve & pink wormhole: my seat // now
path wormhole: 50 mph
school wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
searching wormhole: substance
silence & streets wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
time wormhole: even / a second
waves wormhole: inbreath

 

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and that’s where I are

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2016, Aleister Crowley, alley, appearance, birch, black, Bowie, breakdown, breeze, brick, building, car park, career, Carol, cars, cats, child, church, clothes, coffee shop, creativity, decision, Diane di Prima, disappearance, down, Eastbourne, emptiness, fear, form, grey, Heart Sutra, horizontal, humanity, identity, left, leg, looking, mother, muse, others, passing, pavement, plane, posture, quantum, rebellion, right, right angle, roads, school, searching, seeing, silence, silver, sitting, sound, spire, stain, stopped, streets, talking to myself, teaching, trees, up, vertical, waiting, walking, walls, William Carlos Williams, wind, writers, writing

            inner coffee shop

            so, is writing pointless,
            just rebellion from root
            just the muscling of me
            to spite the hard fear that

            I’ll turn to stone if I look
            into her face … `spite the
            knowledge that others are
            far more brave than me?

            St. Saviour & St. Peter

            so what draws me to sit,
            after all, on the roadside
            wall across from the spire
            clear for all to see the

            even bricks buttress, cap
            and flute up so high to
            eleven storeys to, maybe,
            the single point, with run-

            down stain and grimèd
line defining plane and vertical rightened quantum to the neat, surrounding parking and the passing upright
            humans both of public
            dress and private gait

                           360º

            and then the grey cat
            strolled from some-
            where left between
            silent cars to cross the

            road right – stopped –
            t’looka’leaf ‘n’ disappear
            up on wall by tree-sniff
            stop – fence? – no,

            down be-hind th’wall
            out through th’front
            windscreen ‘n’
            downastepps t’street

            to not appear where
            expected; ‘shut’, a mother
            leads a tot from front
            door to car …
                                   … still no appearance

            … … scamper with the
            wind behind as the car
            pulls away; maybe I should
            record this wh’appened all

            around breeze, strolled –
            stopped – by the wall
            back from b’hind m’left
            enters the gateway out

            by th’alleyway (with the
            bold and naked silver birch
            I hadn’t noticed);
                                          upover
            the fence [not attempted

            before] tadaaanother cat
            black treesniff checkleft
            then … left, jumptowall,
            jump to pavementstop;

            over the road frontleg
            onelick s t r o l l s car-
            shielded; black belly-slink
            low across the road; they

            walk away both from
            sight either side of the van;
            one tail up and wiggy
            one tail fluffy with spine

            these things all of great
            importance to spite the hard fact
            of my writing them,
            old Bull Williams would have

            and that’s where I are

 

there are expanses awkward to the landscape in writing sometimes: the technique is there, the shift can be made, but the will and excitement just isn’t; I have been reading Diane di Prima’s “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, I greatly fed off her childhood but have languoured once she got into the Work; I have been reading about Aleister Crowley’s ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ awkward plane; I have a huge project ongoing writing poewieviews to David Bowie’s oeuvre – I am going to new lands but the luggage is heavy and awkward and requiring decisions which I don’t easily make; oh, and I am off work again, feeling un-plugged in to my own practice of vocation like a forlorn state-of-the-art food mixer; I spent a morning down in Eastbourne chauffeuring my wife around like the successful carer that she is; walking; sitting in a coffee shop; snagged at St. Saviour & St. Peter Church on the corner of Spencer Road and South Street, still pondering the relationship between multifarious form and the emptiness makes it dynamic; but it wasn’t until I sat back in the waiting car and watched the chess moves of two cats in the street that I stumbled across the full quote from the Heart Sutra: “form is emptiness; emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form also is no other than emptiness”; but it wasn’t until I got home and shaped it all up from scribbles to column – with my ageing black AND white cat leaning against my foot – that I wondered if I still hadn’t quite got it yet (as William Carlos Williams, the great great practicer of ‘no poetry but in things’ said); and yet it has been satisfying finding not so …

 

 

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

birch wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
black & grey wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
Bowie wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
breakdown & writing wormhole: nothing to write
breeze wormhole: strange / tarnish
buildings & silver & streets wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
carer wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
Carol wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
cars wormhole: stacked
cats wormhole: new garden
child wormhole: dream 260815
church wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
coffee shop wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
creativity & school wormhole: through
Eastbourne wormhole: along
emptiness wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
identity wormhole: dear clown’s face
looking & muse & sound wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
mother & silence wormhole: early evening
others wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
passing & posture wormhole: really
roads wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
searching wormhole: opening
seeing wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
sitting & talking to myself wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
teaching wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
trees wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
waiting wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
walking wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
walls wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
[William Carlos] Williams wormhole: and then just stop
wind wormhole: keep the light off

 

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