‘quick – she’s gone to pay …’

Tags

2013, 4*, Carol, child, haiku, shop, sound

 

                         quick – she’s gone to pay –
                      childcry from outside and beep
                         of cash register

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Carol wormhole: garden
child wormhole: singsong chant
haiku[esque] wormhole: 1968 – orange sand and mauve mist
sound wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton

 

sleep now

Tags

1997, 2012, 7*, breathing, cotton, doing, dream, dress, embarrassment, evening, feet, girl, hands, identity, lap, legs, movement, muse, neck, portal, purpose, quiet, searching, shop, shoulders, sitting, sleep, streetlight, talking, toes, waiting, writing, yellow

I am safe in a corner shop (looking for portals on shelves in racks)
evening gathers inside ending-day-busy streetlights just          on

a girl and myself waiting to be served quiet     I am seated     waiting
the girl is fidgeting her shoe drawing her foot out slightly

to see her veined feet the root of her toes; she notices me noticing
and moves to another part of the shop adjusting         something

I am sorry; she has on a yellow dress; she comes back to the counter
stands beside me talking to the shopkeeper adjusting her tights now

plucking them up raising her dress a little, she steps and sits on my lap
without talking without referring to me still talking to the shopkeeper

clean crumpled yellow cotton neck; oh; a little bashful I put my arms
around her waist, she continues to talk engaged in her business

her hands come to rest on my hands on her legs I am embarrassed
but she is comfortable in my lap moving and leaning as she talks

thank you yellow cotton shoulder, now I know what to write
now I know what to do, now I can breathe      deeply, I think I could

sleep now

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breathing & doing wormhole: I
dream & girl & muse wormhole: adjustment
evening wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
feet & writing wormhole: returning home handsome
hands wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: passersby
searching wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
sitting wormhole: time
sleep wormhole: gone black
streetlight wormhole: well,
talking wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
waiting & yellow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

the Buddha head in an antique shop

Tags

2014, being, Buddha, compassion, doing, doors, eyes, fire, identity, Lewes, life, love, meaning, openness, others, purpose, realisation, roads, samadhi, searching, shop, silence, smile, stillness, thinking, time, walking, wood

 

 

 

                     the Buddha head in an antique shop stood
                     large and quiet on a cherry wood corner unit

                     by the open door
                                                 what, a Buddha’s head in an

                     antique shop thought I and crossed the road
                     to study the lids cast down detached reserved

                     but not closed to a smile and more mysteriously
                     connected beneath my spiky-backed search for

                     authenticity than my hollow preferences could
                     ever be

                                  making little whorls of realisation all
                     about his head – the release of the milliard

                     anxieties in the myriad of people I have ever
                     known – topped by a flame on the crown so that

                     I knew still that there was more work to be done:

                                walking around
                                in life – there is
                                nothing but walk
                                ing about in life
                                no matter how in
                                between or steep
                                or lost no matter
                                the sweaty knees
                                the lucky finds
                                the giving way
                                the loss of time
                                even if I found
                                my way and even
                                if I’d taken diff-
                                erent turns and
                                alleyways there
                                is still only the
                                lift the swing
                                the plant and
                                the roll to the
                                next          step

                     I went back to see what the price was but the

                     shop was closed and everything in it to be
                     considered pre-ordered or pre-sold anyway

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & life wormhole: ‘when it came / time to go …’
Buddha wormhole: how ironic
compassion & others wormhole: HPB
doing wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
doors wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
eyes & walking wormhole: titanic
identity & realisation wormhole: connections
love & silence & time wormhole: in the middle of silence and heat:
meaning wormhole: somewhat // digesting
openness wormhole: the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon
roads wormhole: moon
searching wormhole: my fidgety self
shops wormhole: we // walk
smile wormhole: my life is not your market
stillness wormhole: St. Ludwigskirche
thinking wormhole: too cold to sit outside / and write flowers of / individual poems
wood wormhole: a splash of fresh water

 

dream / 221297

Tags

1997, 2012, books, bookshop, Carol, dream, exploring, growth, house, Nan, shop, streets, Tunbridge Wells

 

 

 

                           dream
                           221297

                      I am about to buy a house
                           in a town which is
                           not Tunbridge Wells
                      it has been a semi-shop in a row like the Pantiles
                           for many years
                      I have not seen the upstairs yet
                           I have that still to explore
                      it is dilapidated
                           but I will restore it
                      I discuss with C
                           the kids are around
                           my Nan is about too
                                   somewhere
                      in a street nearby I can buy
                           second hand books
                      I am about to buy a house

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

books wormhole: getting rid / of old books
bookshop wormhole: snow
C wormhole: wraggle of architecture
dream wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
house wormhole: at the apex
Nan wormhole: new garden
streets wormhole: exercise
Tunbridge Wells wormhole: street