The opportunity to work

The opportunity to work
Is the thing which intrigues me
Can I do it, can you do it, can we do it
Without our too too easily
Becoming distracted, or dismayed

Today’s interference is from Belgium
A sampler CD from Everything Is Low
Purchased, whilst searching
For Everything Is Slow

Yet it is only one mischief of many
For I also have a recollection of seeing
Mr Drury’s Basket For Crows
In an exhibition in York

Also, in the same place
Almost for certain
I saw sculptured railway sleepers
Which in turn takes me to my pond project

I could make a box
Out of wood
With one low side
To act as the waterfall

So slow was the mindful eating
That I did not finish
Either the biscuit or the coffee
Before I got up to go

Later, sat in the same room
Watching YouTube music videos
Before Netflix shows me the photographer
Who, at the height of his career

Lost the use of his camera arm
He turned to yoga and meditation
To find new shelters for his talents
As I too had done, those many years ago

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What is it which urges us to look back

What is it which urges us to look back
Have we got some innate need for regression
Do we seek to open up blocked passageways
Which we alone have formed or created

Am I, with you
Are we still asking ourselves
All of those imponderable questions
Is that why we seek out the shelters

Is that why we need to construct
Spaces for dreaming
Places for deeper journeys
Across, beyond, and also within ourselves

There is little other
Than a photograph in the book
No one has trailed out a rope
To the location in Friston Forest

I did search; but time, time moves on
There may be other records, elsewhere
Held by those we haven’t yet met
Or those whom we have lost along the way

So to today’s shelter
There is some certainty, joy even
In the bright spring sunlight
Of the here and the now

Which raises memories of sparkles
On those other waters, be they
Dams, ponds, lakes, seas, or oceans
What is it which gifts these pleasures

Do I imagine the lightness
The freedoms
Are the good feelings
Wholly of my imagination

Or do you, do we, does everyone
Share in the absolute’s positivity
Are we all able to see the good side
To find our way out of the darkness

All the while caressing
The major and minor irritations
Which remind us
Of the ever present presence of despair

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It was in 1985 that

It was in 1985 that
Chris Drury created
Shelter for Dreaming
In Friston Forest, Sussex

We are now in 2019
You yourself might work out
How many years
Have then passed by

Chris’ work
Was a structure
My work
Is a pure indulgence

I was, in 1985
For the most part
Thirty-three years old
For my birthday is in February

During current research
Gaston Bachelard
In his Poetics of Space
Reminds me

For a knowledge of intimacy
Localisation in the spaces of intimacy
Is more urgent
Than the determination of dates

So where was I in 1985
And where were you, or where were we
We all might wonder, mightn’t we
Just as you and I might also remember

For that is surely
Where this work should begin
Doesn’t that need to be the starting point
For refreshing those most intimate moments

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Conclude

A manifestation of what is
What is within
Those being-born-again walls
Of this body

More walls than any room
Or ceilings in any palace
More memories to the ounce
Than any senses

Don’t count the hours
Or the days
But listen to the stories
Being baptised by your breath

One gift of perfect hope
Mutual enjoyment of the thrift
It is to your advantage
If I go away

There was beauty in the reading
From the sensations to the soul
From the fully realised
To the entirely unrealisable

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Sums

Compline at eight PM
Not so many tonight
Only three in the congregation
Would there be more at nine PM
Or would there be less
What is the purpose of the time shift

06:30 for Matins
My last morning in the calm
Though not so quiet
What with the wind
Howling around
Outside the Abbey

The big man so it seems
Is not a morning man
Oh but how wrong I am
For here he comes
How swift
I am to judge

What else but to be alive
What more might one want
Than to become
More personable
To become
The full person

Where I have been
With love
I have carried love
Where I have
Carried love
I have been with love

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