‘avenue of wraggled gorse tops …’

Tags

'scape, 2013, 3*, Ashdown Forest, avenue, clouds, gorse, grey, horizon, silhouette, walking

 

                                   avenue of wraggled gorse tops
                silhouetted before grey-serried ranks of cloud
                     stood to attention on the horizon

 

 

 

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

Ashdown Forest wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
clouds wormhole: morning sun
grey & walking wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
horizon wormhole: south horizon
silhouette wormhole: garden

 

garden

Tags

'scape, 2013, 7*, Carol, clouds, Eden, garden, green, hair, hill, life, Mam Tor, mist, morning, pine, silhouette, silver, sun, trees, valley, walking

                                garden

                walking up through the morning
                      to Mam Tor
                will the mist rise off the hill
                      as we rise
                well it doesn’t matter because
                      right there
                the sun has broken through the
                      upper cloud
                but not yet the misty-wet, making
                      the trees
                green-silhouette and the valley silvery-
                      incandescent
                as the new-born first day

                      in front
                is Carol’s forest of hair walking
                      slowly
                into the quick-grown pine getting
                      nowhere

 

 

 

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

Carol wormhole: handsome
clouds & trees wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
garden wormhole: lost and city ground
green & hair & mist wormhole: prelude: // travel
life 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
morning wormhole: mother and daughter
pine wormhole: clouds
silhouette wormhole: love and precision
silver wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
sun wormhole: too much in arrival
valley wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
walking wormhole: prospect

 

love and precision

Tags

2015, 5*, Birmingham, blue, Charlotte, daughter, doing, driving, houses, love, precision, red, silhouette, sky, talking to myself, walking

                played with Dot
                hung with Dot; there’s
                a lot to be gained
                from hanging with love

                drove to Birmingham
                walked around dark
                ening redbrick houses
                until we were all silhouettes

                before a Prussian blue sky;
                do the formal stuff
                when you can, absorb
                the rest with love and precision

 

‘Dot’ is my daughter Charlotte; just over a year ago she moved up to Shropshire with her partner; we visit, and sometimes meet in Birmingham for a day

 

 

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

blue & sky wormhole: industrial estate
Charlotte wormhole: dream 230315
daughter wormhole: returning home handsome
doing wormhole: sleep now
love wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
red wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
silhouette wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
talking to myself wormhole: woven-through
walking wormhole: magnificent salad

 

was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?

Tags

2014, 5*, action, Batman, cape, city, connection, faces, light, moon, plants, shadow, silhouette, skyline, thinking, trees, walls

                was there a moon
                on the alleyway wall
                confused in front of
                the city skyline?

                the rising moon over the city
                makes action detached,
                the figure lost in silhouette
                but for highlighted cloth-crease
                and pad of shoulder

                whereas indoors
                the silhouette is lightened on body and wall
                and shadows appear
                across the face of thinking men
                while potted plants look on
                in foreground and detail

                the journey from city to house
                is between two trees as the moon descends
                you need simply lean in lunge and cape and arm
                and you’re there
                under the sole arc of light
                clashing outlines of silhouette
                interconnected and enlightened

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
city wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – mmpph’
light wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
moon wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
shadow & skyline & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
silhouette wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
thinking wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
walls wormhole: the 19th century

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

Tags

1967, 3*, air, answers, beauty, being, bells, black, breath, breeze, brown, bull, cause and effect, childhood, clarity, clouds, cows, curtains, dancing, dawn, dew, doing, dusk, earth, east, Einstein, elm, energy, evening, field, freedom, grass, green, grey, heat, hedge, hills, horizon, identity, Jupiter, leaves, life, light, logic, meadow, mind, moment, months, moon, morning, mother, mouse, nature, night, nightjar, noise, openness, order, owl, questions, quiet, rabbit, rebirth, scarlet, September, silence, silhouette, silver, sky, slow, space, stars, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, truth, ultimate reality, uncle, universe, valley, velvet, white, wind, wings, woodland, words

A Precious Moment

As after the heat of a summer’s day the face glows in the mildness of evening, so the face of the countryside glows in the mildness of early autumn.   The summer months have infused the merest suggestion of brown in the deepening green of the foliage and the face of the earth gives up its warmth to the stars above to see them dance.   It was into this calm that I walked one late September’s eve.   The evening star cast her unblinking eye across the heavenly dome to Jupiter in the darkening east and the nightjar echoed its song above the empty fields.   I stood at the end of the stack-yard and returned the disinterested gaze of a cow in the field beyond.

It is during these slow hours when the pace of the day has declined, that the smaller noises of the land become apparent.   The bull, who was tethered a full two hundred yards away in the next field could be heard to rattle his chain and blow down his nose at a particularly juicy clump of grass he has found.   Behind me in the ‘maternity’ box, a freshly calved heifer mooed huskily yet very softly as its offspring raised its head suddenly at a strange sound.   Perhaps it was the sound of ancient timbers creaking under the weight of centuries, or that of the leaves above whispering to the bowed stems in the hay meadow below.   Or maybe it was the very silence that enshrouded these small sounds that attracted its attention, for silence is so startling in its rarity and its beauty.   Dusk gave way to night and I became aware of the immense depths of space, the dizzy height of the mackerel sky, and although it was the clouds that moved, it seemed they were stationary against the clear black silhouettes of the elms and that it was the motion of the gibbous moon behind the clouds that alternately blackened and silver-plated the night.   Even at the tender and romantic age of sixteen I was aware of this quietude, and in one enlightened moment jotted down these few words on an old envelope:

         Soft, soft, the bell that tolls the evensong
         Across full summer’s empty fields serene.
         And slowly draws the scarlet cloak, the hem’s
         Black velvet, diamond specked, communes me with
         The white barn owl, who with his noiseless wings
         Doth glide and swoop upon the luckless mouse.
         Selene set within the lap of dusk
         Transmutes the living green to silver plate,
         Enshrouds my world with immobility.
         And with a quietude that frees the mind
         Of bondage from the peering eyes of day,
         I fain become the earth, the sky, the all.

But it wasn’t until my late teens that I realised there are two times during the twenty four hour cycle when such a quietude exists. One is just before the dusk and the other just before dawn.   Although both seem to be divisions between day and night, the prelude to dawn seems to me to be the more startling and more satisfying to experience.   In the evening the mind is released into a reverie bound by personal conscious thought, but during the morning pause one experiences a freedom and profundity of thought that is rarely to be found in any other part of time.

It is barely half past five in the morning when I start milking, but often I arrive at the cowshed half an hour before in order to experience this precious moment.   Although at this hour the ‘Stone that puts the stars to flight’ has yet to be flung, I can sense the great spaciousness of the valley before me.   Again the trees move softly and the long grass in the hay meadow sifts the breath of night, and I wait.   I wait for that incorporeal beauty that is the union of soul and nature.   It begins where the breezes end and the rustling leaves are stilled.   A serene stillness envelopes the woods and meadows and even I am not conscious of breathing.   I am drawn into the quietude and become part of it; become part of the very earth on which I stand; part of the universe through which I move.   I have become part of each blade of grass in the valley before me, part of every hill.   I feel myself part of the earth, feel its very movement through space.   Unfortunately mere words can no longer be the conveyance of the emotions involved (and I use the word ‘emotions’ for want of a better noun) for they become so expansive and so personal.   No longer can mere words impress the reader’s soul with such profundity of emotion that this experience releases within me.   Each must go his own way, search alone and experience it first hand and with an open mind.

A thought is born and from that thought comes two more.   The two are made four and the four made eight, a self-multiplying chain reaction of thoughts has been set in motion that flows with great haste through the mind; in fact a torrent of thoughts in one brief second, and yet each one is startlingly clear and leads the mind one step nearer the truth.   The heavenly dome is vast above the valley and the stars, thrown into their mythological patterns by the great cosmic hand, impress their presence on the mind with unusual brilliance and time is no more.   Now the mental hosts are converging, and step by step I am racing towards that vertex which is the ultimate truth.   The questions are being answered at an ever increasing rate, the startling, brutal logic disclosing the result of a preceding reaction which itself, reveals a cause.   So through to the highest plane the mind soars upon an ever accelerating reversal of the law of causation. But the pace is too much.   The mind flags and begins to flounder.   At this juncture the mind can be likened to a water skier who, while the pace is kept up skims along the surface in the sun, but immediately he slows down he begins to sink, until at length he finds himself floundering with no forward movement.   Now the mind has become weak and cannot comprehend the unfathomable thought.   But I have brushed the grey curtain; I have seen a light faint though it may be and both my physical and spiritual selves have been revitalised and my cup runneth over.

For most of our lives we are lost beings out of tune with life around us.   Only during such precious moments as these do we fit into the great harmonious chord; all things round and above have their special place in it, from the fat brown rabbit throbbing in the cornfields to the fleecy pieces of golden cloud that sail upon the pale green skies of dusk.   Worries, anxieties, tensions, all are reduced to their proper size in relation to life, and as the imperceptible ‘Left hand of dawn’ lifts the veil on the eastern horizon, we are cleansed and reborn with the stripling day.

It is only during such periods that nature can be reduced to anything approaching order, and that there is an order I am in no doubt.   Einstein’s inquiring mind was working on the universal equation when the workings of that very same equation stilled his physical being; perhaps now he has solved it, we in this life never shall.   The perpetual motion of nature is the perfect machine and we are part of that machine.   It is complete within itself, recreating its own new parts from the debris of the old.   No energy is wasted or lost, just charged in form.   Nature permits us a marginal tolerance within which we may make one or two adjustments to suit our needs and requirements, but beyond this we dare not go for we merely create more problems than we solve.

         So does she pass, the gentle night,
         Slow seeps the dawn upon the scene.
         Dew sparkling in the first light of
         The new day shows where she has been.
         The eyes of day now open on
         The dewy sward and gossamer
         Bows low beneath its pearly load,
         And hedgerows faintly scent the air
         With green along the unused road.
         And I am born once more and see
         The day as I once first beheld –
         A child within his mother’s arms,
         Another, within its mother’s arms.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & field & morning wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
beauty wormhole: the policies came to nothing
being wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
black & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
breath wormhole: inbreath
breeze wormhole: and that’s where I are
brown wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
childhood wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: reaching branch
evening & silhouette wormhole: tired
green & space & uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
grey & horizon wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
hedge & hills & life & light wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: with endless love
leaves & mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
moon wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
night & silence & sky wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
openness wormhole: ‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27
silver wormhole: Jon
thought & time wormhole: inbreath
white wormhole: mauve
words wormhole: bloogying

 

tired

Tags

'scape, 2012, 5*, ageing, childhood, city, evening, identity, lifetimes, light, Manhattan, money, people, power, roads, silhouette, sky, sound, sparrows, time, traffic, trees

                                                              tired

                                travelled
                a long time to arrive in New York, still the same person
                                roads
                still scraped and pockmarked since I wanted to come here as a teen;

                                trees
                still reach and lean in front of the sky,
                                city
                people still live and breathe the power of my money;

                                lights,
                go on in the evening and, between
                                traffic
                shoals, the sparrows bicker in the trees

 

 

 

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

childhood & evening wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
city wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
identity wormhole: tripping up to / London town
lifetimes wormhole: currency of generations
light & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
Manhattan wormhole: 1964
money wormhole: teached / in the ass
people wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
power wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
roads wormhole: always
silhouette wormhole: 1967
sky & sound & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
sparrows wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

 

1967

Tags

'scape, 1960s, 1967, 2011, abandonment, beauty, buildings, cornice, lemon, olive, purple, rooftops, silhouette, sky, vermillion, years

 

 

 

                                                              1967

                                                              deepest vermillion
                                              streaked with lemon purple
                                between the dull olive silhouette of rooftops
                wires and cornices

 

 

 

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

1967 wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11
abandonment wormhole: 1968
beauty wormhole: need
buildings wormhole: Le Pont Royal, 1909
lemon & sky wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
olive wormhole: thick thick fog
purple wormhole: up on the hill
rooftops wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
silhouette wormhole: Jon
years wormhole: 1965

 

Jon

Tags

2015, birch, birds, blue, father, grey, Jon, nose, outside, silhouette, silver, sky, son, trees, woodland, work

                                              Jon

                                              but
                                he was right
                to take the Old Dog out to the woods
                                after work
                                shut me out a little
                                while he forages for something or other

                                              while
                                I lean among the silver birch
                                and join the birds with
                cold ears and running nose and greet the blueing sky
                                cold grey and held with silhouettes

 

Jon is my second son; he practises foraging for naturally available foods and sometimes takes me out if I look like I need it …

 

 

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

birch & silver wormhole: and that’s where I are
birds wormhole: suddenly fly off again
blue wormhole: first Spring storm
father wormhole: mauve
grey wormhole: up on the hill
Jon wormhole: Luisenplatz
silhouette wormhole: keep the light off
sky wormhole: tabla
trees wormhole: red ink
work wormhole: through

 

keep the light off

Tags

2013, awareness, field, glass, hedge, light, looking, mineral, movement, net curtains, outside, rain, rooftops, shadow, silhouette, society, suburbia, true nature, wind, windows

 

 

 

                                keep the light off

                part the net curtains
                                out through the window … stop
                                and look and
                                              really look
                                the shaggy silhouettes
                                high to the left long to the right
                                              bristle and lean
                                awhile the drives and avenues of rooftops
                                extend like fields and hedgerows hideously
                                              all accepting the rain (running down the glass)
                                              to reveal their two-tone

                                                                                    mineral nature

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: thick thick fog
field wormhole: the continental stride of trains
glass & rain & wind & windows wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
hedge & shadow wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
light wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
looking & society wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
net curtains wormhole: south horizon
rooftops wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11
silhouette wormhole: Soir Bleu, 1914

 

Soir Bleu, 1914

Tags

1914, 2015, alcohol, blue, cigarette, clown, dark, drinking, Edward Hopper, evening, eyes, flesh, French, hills, lantern, mind, painting, parents, river, silhouette, table, thinking, years

 

 

 

                           Soir Bleu, 1914

                           what does that clown
                           sat at the table with
                           cigarette oblivious
                           to blood-wounded eyes?

                           my goodness, I hadn’t
                           noticed, sat here with
                           only a towel to wear,
                           no wonder I cannot drink

                           I
                           am a Chinese lantern made
                           flesh immaculate borne of the
                           minds of my un-talking parents
                           sat before a clown with empty carafe

                           me, I could paint a picture of this all
                           but the hills are dark behind my mind
                           and roll downstream continuously
                           out of frame

 

 

 

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

blue & eyes wormhole: com- / mute
Edward Hopper & river & years wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938
evening wormhole: zok! and pow!
hills wormhole: dream 260815
mind wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
silhouette wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
table wormhole: the art of sit and follow
thinking wormhole: let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were