on facing the Have

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees

Tags

5*, alder, almond, apple, ash, beech, blossom, breeze, cherry, clock, elm, eyes, fir, fire, flame, garden, gaze, green, ground, hazel, hedge, leaves, oak, orchard, pink, shadow, silence, sky, sound, Spring, step, thought, trees, white, wood, writing, yellow

                pageant of the trees

                spring’s tonic rising
                and hazel catkins swell
                to greet the first warm days

                elm and alder to follow
                heralding beech and oak
                and later the firs will show

                their new cones, dusting
                the ground with yellow;
                the gardens will fill with

                almond blossom and
                orchards will froth with
                cherry white and apple pink,

                aperitif to coming summer;
                hedgerows become en-veiled
                in diaphanous haze, a

                million leaves on the
                passing breeze; stop
                writing, now, step out

                beneath the cavernous sky,
                deep into the quiet of a glade
                to be silent within silence,

                eyes open like shadows
                in dancing leaves and thoughts
                greener to the underside

                                                                —–

                                                gazing between sentences
                                                into the fire

                                                the beam from the
                                                old house burns clear flame,

                                                tinsel murmurings between
                                                the ticking clock,

                                                until pure white ash
                                                falls without sound

 

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

 

 

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

blossom & breeze & fir & garden & green & hedge & oak & shadow & silence & thought & writing & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
eyes wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
leaves & pink & sky & sound & trees & white & wood wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
spring wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

Tags

1967, alder, almond, amethyst, apple, armchair, beech, blossom, branches, breeze, cattle, change, cherry, children, chimney stacks, church, clock, common, cottage, economics, elm, enclosure, Essex, evening, eyes, fields, fir, fire, flame, forest, garden, gate, grass, green, hedge, Henry VIII, history, knowledge, landscape, lanes, laughter, leaves, London, Michael J Redford, mind, noise, oak, orchard, passing, past, pink, pollen, poplars, progress, red, rust, shadow, ships, silence, sitting, sky, smoke, society, speech, Spring, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, tiles, time, trees, village, walls, war, white, winter, woodland, writing, yellow

Trees

Spring’s tonic has risen within the trees and hazel catkins have swollen in greeting to the first warm days of the year.   Elm and alder are soon to follow heralding beech and oak and in a month or so the firs will show their new cones, green and full of juice, and their catkins will dust the ground yellow with pollen.   Throughout the villages cottage gardens will soon be filled with almond blossom and orchards will froth over with cherry white and apple pink spilling an aperitif to summer upon the living fields.   The hedgerows and woodlands become en-veiled by the diaphanous greenery of a million tiny leaves, an amethyst haze so tender and tenuous that I fear for its safety lest it be borne away upon the passing breeze.   I become aware of a restlessness within me that calls with increasing persistence to forego my writing and step out beneath the cavernous spring sky.   The pageant of the trees has begun.   Field and lane alike become heavy with leaf and only a section of red tile or a chimney stack, like flakes of old rust within the foliage, betray the presence of human habitation.   The blanket of summer affords us a privacy and seclusion that is unattainable in naked winter when one’s every move can be discerned by the neighbour’s critical eye, but here in the depths of summer, we can take our thoughts into the quiet of a woodland glade, we can be silent and be within silence for a little while and rest your eyes upon the shadows of the dancing leaves above.   And how restful the colour green, and how restful to the eye and through the eye to the mind that blossoms forth green thoughts.

This spring evening upon which I write is a decidedly chilly one even though the day itself has been full of warmth.   Thus I am to be found sitting in an armchair, putting my thoughts on paper, gazing between sentences into the dusty red glow of a log fire.   It is a funeral pyre really, the cremation of the last remains of an old local cottage that has long died, having fallen prey through disuse, to the vagaries of our climate and the onslaught of the village urchins.   I gaze with half closed eyes at the sawn up piece of beam that was once part of the skeleton of the old house, and see it burn with clear flame and little smoke.   In accompaniment to the ticking of the clock upon the mantle shelf I hear the old log’s tinsel murmurings that sound like a piece of screwed up silver paper, tossed aside and left slowly to expand, and as the pure white ash falls without sound, I feel myself drawn into the distant past and fancy I hear the laughter of children as they play beneath the boughs of a tree which this dead piece of wood was once a living part.   Whose children are these?   From what age do they come?   Perhaps they are the offspring of Henry VIII’s generation, the irresponsible youth of the day who cared nothing about the great cultural and religious upheaval taking place about them as they played handball between the northernmost buttresses of the old church wall.

It was at about this time when the monasteries had just been dissolved that the first enlightening book on agriculture by Fitzherbert of Norbury had just been published.   Was this historic pioneer of fertility indirectly responsible for the downfall of this old tree?   For the seas of knowledge flooded the land and split the forests into arboreal islands and many fine examples of the medieval forests became the battered flotsam of progress.

Certainly this old piece of wood never witnessed an act of enclosure, for the open field system was predominant right up until the late eighteenth century, when round and about the great open fields sprawled the commons, the scrubland and marshes, creating through their wastefulness and their infertility, a barrier to agricultural and therefore economic progress.   Although enclosure was a costly business, required finances could be supplemented by felling timber which, during the Napoleonic wars commanded a high price.   Also, in order to fence off enclosures, what was more natural than to plant more timber which, unlike normal fencing that needed constant and costly repair, increased in value as time went by.   The first choice of timber was naturally that which was most valuable such as ash and oak.   But the oak was slow in maturing, and where the ash spread its roots, no crops or grass would grow and no cattle would graze.   It was thus that the stately elm made its appearance and stamped the English hedgerow with a character all its own.   Being able to grow, and grow quickly in all types of soil, made it a very desirable timber to grow.   Also, the elm allowed grazing beneath its boughs and, due to its durability in water, it was at this time much sought after by the Navy Board for its ships.   Water mills, lock gates and drain pipes were of elm, and at the turn of the century, London alone still had over four hundred miles of mains constructed from its timbers.

Caught upon the ebb flow of time, I see the trees’ ancestral giants, the calamites, that reared two hundred feet into the sky.   They heard no child’s laughter, neither did they hear the buzz of insects nor the songs of birds, for they existed in the dim distant dawn of the carboniferous age millions of years before the birth of man, when even the birth of the first blade of grass was aeons in the offing.

They grew long, long before man, mute sentinels surveying the changing landscape, witnessing scenes that no mortal has ever gazed upon.   Then when man came, they furnished him with food, shelter and fuel; they gave to him the means of traversing the oceans.   They have been instruments of both war and peace and have featured in mans’ writing, music and art.   They have been made gods and devils and have bought good luck and bad.   Man’s long and close association with trees is evident from his desire to wander beneath the green boughs when time and toil permit, and from picnic parties who would sooner travel an extra mile to spread their chequered cloths within their shadows.   Perhaps it is because a tree expresses continuity, a security that mankind through all the ages and searched and worked for.

Although not a native of Essex, this ancient county endears itself to me more and more as time rolls slowly by, and time does pass slowly in Essex, for to plumb its highways and byways is to plumb history itself.   It has been slow to change through the centuries and there are numerous back lane hamlets which, even to this day, have experienced virtually no change for many, many years.   One lively youngster or eighty five who lives on the borders of Chignal Smealy and Chignal St. James (what delightful names are these), told me that the only difference he could see in his village was the height of the poplars at the end of his garden which, when he was only “knee high to a goose-pimple” were only a “stack an’ ‘alf ‘igh”, even the cottage gate that was propped open on one rusty hinge was the very same one his grandfather had made.

Having been one of the most heavily afforested counties in England, Essex is rich of fine examples of man’s utilisation of wood.   It can be seen in his architecture, in his tools, farm implements and vehicles.   The men of Essex are very conscious of their affinity with trees, and go to great lengths to preserve the more eminent members of their arboreal population, and I find it hard to believe that there is another county in the whole of the British Isles that can boast a greater number of ancient trees that have been propped up and strung up to cast their humbling shadows upon the heads of men.   Most of these old trees are of course oak, for Essex was noted for its oak forests, but as farming spread, so the forests disappeared, and the elms lining the fields and lanes now outnumber to oaks and are a far more familiar sight.   It is these old isolated trees that afford us a tangible link with the past.   They disperse any feeling of isolation in time and give to us instead a much needed sense of continuity, of that which has no end.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

blossom wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
branches & mind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
breeze wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
change wormhole: Bridgnorth
church wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
evening & sky & thpought wormhole: space for probing thought
eyes & passing & shadow & speech & walls wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
fir wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
green & Spring wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
hedge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
history wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
knowledge wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
leaves wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
oak wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
pink & time & white & yellow wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
red wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: despite that
sitting wormhole: getting fat in me old age
smoke wormhole: cross-section
society wormhole: raised brow
trees & war & winter wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
writing wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 4*, dialogue, distraction, January, music, temptation, William Carlos Williams, wind, windows, writing

                                   JANUARY

                Again I reply to the triple winds
                running chromatic fifths of derision
                outside my window:
                                                     Play louder.
                You will not succeed. I am
                bound more to my sentences
                the more you batter at me
                to follow you.
                                         And the wind,
                as before, fingers perfectly
                its derisive music.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

it’s the immanence of writing within the experience that it is writing about that makes writing a wrestling match between perception and the thought thereof …

 

 

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

distraction wormhole: divergent // direction
music wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
wind & windows wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George

Tags

1967, 7*, branches, breeze, brother, child, clouds, cuckoo, dust, earth, echo, Essex, green, hands, home, journey, land, lark, life, meadow, mind, pink, poem, retirement, scythe, shirt, Shropshire, silence, smell, speech, stone, time, wind, woodland, writing

                                old George

                long retired from land, unable to
                keep soil from his boots, continues
                working, earth and life, picking up

                branches and stones; the blades
                cut clean, men in the meadows
                sway to the rhythm of scythes,

                stems fall graceful to swathe and
                green aroma, the diminishing island
                cut to the last, magnified by

                silence, a lark high above the
                dust; the breezes will dry the
                stalks to rustle and the distant

                woods will echo – cuckoo; it is
                then the child places the building
                block on the nursery floor when

                there will be no time, day after
                day, save for forks of pitch and
                hands that burn pink and stalk

                of shirt and sweat, constant under
                minds of approaching storm cloud
                before the last journey home; old

                George had removed his jacket
                picking out fluff from the corners
                of a pocket, “…used to be my brother’s;

                lived in Shropshire … didn’t
                find no pound notes in it, just fluff,
                a few hay seeds,” flung them

                to the Essex wind – scattered
                poems and stacked essays,
                typed up and waiting to behold

 

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

 

 

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

branches wormhole: presence
breeze wormhole: chuckling
child wormhole: next unexpected step
clouds wormhole: that
echo wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
green wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
hands & life & retirement wormhole: beguiled / desire
mind & writing wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
pink & stone wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
silence & speech wormhole: new blue porsche
smell & time wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
wind wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams

 

scintillating to mind’s content

Tags

2017, 6*, being, blogging, browse, centre, counting, doing, emptiness, growth, heart, internet, love, mantra, mind, mother sentient beings, publishing, sharing, sitting, true nature, world, writing

                things happen according
                to my published pages or
                didn’t need writing at all

                so I stopped coiunting mantras
                and let the world sit and
                browse all around me with

                as near to the love I can
                muster, now, at the centre
                and all of the love we

                could share if we but knew
                the empty centre at our
                heart from which we grow

                scintillating to mind’s content

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
doing wormhole: all // are // none
emptiness wormhole: anxiety
love wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
mind wormhole: sometimes
publishing wormhole: next unexpected step
sitting wormhole: ash leaves
world wormhole: that
writing wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

 

so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

Tags

2017, 6*, consummation, discovery, fingers, gap, gold, grasshoppers, Have, life, light, mind, retirement, Rumplestiltkin, talking to myself, weaving, words, writing

                                                                so
                do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or …
                                Rumplestiltskin

                                                oh,
                                I have a mind and
                                                oh,
                I can weave gold from any old fibre

                whether you give me your life or not – never
                                a consummation to be made,
                                                never a consummation to be had

                                but
                they have some charm
                                and they have some light
                                                to decipher

                                                makes them sparkle if I twinkle the words finely enough
                                between the gaps
                fingers working like grasshoppers

 

 

 

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

gold wormhole: mauve
Have & life wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
light wormhole: chuckling
mind wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
retirement & talking to myself & writing wormhole: letting them go
words wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory

 

letting them go

Tags

2017, 6*, attention, awareness, b/w, blues, branches, chords, comics, doors, guitar, identity, improvisation, laziness, letting go, life, living, morning, mouth, notice, passing, perspective, retirement, sound, talking to myself, twilight, world, writing

                I used to be lazy and cast wide
                with absently open mouth
                greedy to capture every
                snippet of notice to write:

                finding the secret doorway
                in the b/w reprint vista
                that will be the perspective
                with which I will return, noticed

                finding the lingering trill
                and the shifted-chord refrain
                across the neck of my guitar
                inexorable in-tangent flight

                finding new twilight between
                turning bare branches in which
                to pace the following
                mornings in strange new worlds;

                but it was a laziness difficult
                to maintain, this finding of access
                through letting them go …
                into awareness – much more alive

 

 

 

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

attention & identity wormhole: to arms, then;
awareness wormhole: loss
branches wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
comics & mouth wormhole: 1964
doors & life & retirement wormhole: lost the search
guitar wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
letting go wormhole: chuckling
living wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
morning wormhole: abandoned sound mirrors
passing & sound wormhole: cross-section
talking to myself & writing wormhole: oh, alright then
twilight wormhole: without any buffet at all
world wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

oh, alright then

Tags

2017, 6*, beech, church, lifetimes, Nottingham, offices, passing, poetry, quiet, sandstone, sitting, talking to myself, time, traffic, trunk, windows, writing

                oh, alright then

                                sitting in a church ground
                                before a beech tree sometime coppiced

                                pushing up the ancient sandstone
                                so much quieter before

                                the ill-fitting windows
                                of terraced offices where nothing

                                happens
                                save the mark of passed lives

                                the twisted trunk
                                and the exhaust of cobbled engines

                                over speed-humps, to claim
                                that I don’t seem to be writing many poems these days

 

 

 

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

church wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
lifetimes wormhole: the balance necessary between
passing wormhole: amniotic avenue
poetry wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
quiet wormhole: quiet river
sitting wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
talking to myself wormhole: so where have I got:
time & windows wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping

Tags

2018, 7*, change, constellations, elm, fields, fire, gale, harvest, hills, letter, night, production, rain, reaping, sheep, sound, stars, sun, thought, time, trees, valley, vista, windows, writing

                Dear Pat and John,
                and then the rain came

                for weeks, now, making
                havoc over fields of

                trampled trees and
                drowned sheep; rain

                against the windows
                as I write, rain carried

                on the gale that
                bounds up the valley

                gust over gust up and
                over the leaden hills;

                the window rattles
                a log slips, sparks

                disperse and resettle
                like time; the view

                has changed outside:
                metal beasts across fields

                nodding idiotically, no
                further need of pitchforks

                under the sun, now just
                production, churning

                moral thought to mud,
                no distribution

                where fields of ignorance
                lay; last night

                the engines switched off
                one by one across

                the fields and
                Pegasus shimmered

                gazing long on the
                southern elms

                standing about
                with hands in their pockets

                reaping their own
                and individual harvest

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working; “Pat and John” were friends of Mick from his London days, I think; he wrote occasional letters to them talking about the ‘countryside’

 

 

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

change wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hills & sun & thought & time & trees & valley & windows & writing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
night & rain wormhole: river
sound wormhole: Batgirl –
stars wormhole: the silent night of the Batman