Excited and Quiescent States

   There’s that which gathers,
   a tableaux is formed and seen;
   then that-which-pulls-apart... empties all, with shudder, sigh:

   54 starlings on an aerial, chattering, such chattering; they dwell, huddle; 
   then silence, they are gone.

   And, there’s Time: careless, absentminded, unconcerned. 

Inside, something coalesces,
I retain... patterns, relation;
then, distraction, the shape unravels:

what was formed, dissolves; there’s brief flashes, 
a muted cry of loss, then cold, bareness.

In Time: oblivious, implacable, clueless.

Outside, I taste colours, lick contours, smell textures. 
Red berries, saviours in difficult times.
Such yellows: celandine, laburnum, verbascum.
And always, dark green glistening ivy:

concerns blanket the spirit; we turn to the thin sun when able, 
but weariness flattens and diminishes.

Within Time: midnight Blue, unappeasable, unforgiving, unsparing.

There’s movements... 
round and round, 
side to side,
up and down:

squirrels chasing around a tree, scampering wildly, fast turns, darting,
quite wonderful. Jackdaws bounce, geese upending, ducks upending.

And Time: unschooled, soulless, unresponsive.

There is repetition. Contrast. Getting lost:

the stuck ones growl, the tethered ones strain, the flying ones fall, 
the lost ones stare, mouths open, fearful backward glances.

Then there’s Time: dumb, foolish, moronic.

One aspect is skittish, 
one is compliant;
one is unresolved:

coltish fluttering, then dutiful demands; dogs pull, cats stretch, 
hoovers annoy, eyes glaze, will falters.

Within Time: imbecilic, unlettered, unconscious.

One is exposition, 
one is development, 
one is recapitulation:

there’s a subject, agency, consideration, expansiveness;
then the lichgate creaks, the boiler breaks down, the drains block. 
Commonplaces tear at creativity, dismantle effort, bring to nothing.

In Time: insentient, lumbering, a dunce.

One is of order,
one of mess,
one of struggle, then relief.

a day’s attention to aligning, controlling chaos.
The light fades, blessed stillness, just the fragile scent of sweet peas.

And Time: obtuse, dense, witless.

One is shimmering, 
one is still;
one is viscous:

the Pyrocanthus shivers and glows, the wet steeple shines; 
I recall the repellent grey muddy slopes to the river Wye

Then there’s Time: cold-blooded, thick-skinned, unimpressionable.

One makes soup,
one is so tired of shopping;
one can’t remember what was, where and when, how or why:

but, it was deliciously sweet, it may have been squash, sweet potato, carrots; 
the bags were heavy.

Blank Time: sterile, gormless, oafish.

One path is set..... watch TV, have children, get gerbils, make syllabub, fold towels. 
Another tries a little, then falters, fades, changes nothing.
Another isn’t much interested, there’s a dull shuffling.

the stench of the everyday, of transaction, arrangement,
the peasant’s calculating eye, the auctioneer’s terrible jabbering over poor sheep; 
the hurt, wandering afar.

And there’s Time: dullard, crass, ludicrous.

One is riotous disobedience,
one is the measured voice, systematiser; 
one stares, uncomprehending:

so things coalesce, stagnate, splinter; what happened? what was there?

Within Time: blunderous, dimwitted, insensate.

Leaves tumble, pigeons waddle, jackdaws bounce:

today there were 63 starlings on the aerial, 4 dogs in the recreation ground, 
a black cat on a fence post, dark green shiny dripping ivy.

And Time: clownish, inattentive, unmindful.

We have wandered, fled, hid, killed,
camped, farmed, erected shrines, pleaded with / whined to / shrieked at ‘Gods’; 
been ‘Enlightened’, ‘Reasonable’.
Now we have the era of incessant rain, war, disinformation:

the tribal call, the arming, the graves, the same stories: of initiation, rupture, quest. 
Christmas-after-ghastly-never-ending-ghastly-July-to-January-Christmas.

Fill Time: insensible, incoherent, thickheaded.

The piano / paintings / perfume have aged, 
words are thin tinkling bells;
the Ivy grows:

the train is delayed, the pan burns, the aimless loiter, the black ice claims 
sprain and fracture, the shadows and sermons lengthen.

In Time: cretinous, preposterous, arid.

Brambles thrust, insist, insinuate, walls crack.

there’s a gathering of things, just long enough to be discerned, 
sometimes wondered at, before dissipation, dissolution, scattering.

Then Time: ineluctable, impassive, obdurate.

One disparages,
one is more fair;
one doesn’t care and just wants it all to end:

draw the curtains, make the tea, there’ll likely be no regeneration today.

No Time: unmollifiable, adamantine, pitiless.

There’s movements: 
round and round, 
side to side,
up and down:

the first time I saw squirrels chasing around a tree, autumn 1970, morning mist, 
sitting in the bowl of an old oak, reading Orlando,
sometimes gazing over towards Knole House.
20, enraptured, without anchor. The memory, the moment, dies with me anyhow.

Time yawns: blind, mute, half-witted.

She waits on the platform, 
purple chenille coat with large wooden buttons:

she’d taken the number 9 bus -and her golden straw hair- over Seal Chart, through Ightham, Borough Green; this was then a meandering lane of broadleaf and fir, thicket and pond.

Time Ago: gormless, distracted, idiotic.

Sensing the world.
In the World and Of the World; 
inescapable:

Objects come together, spend a while together, separate, 
feel relief, or yearning; are gone.

Silent Time: lumbering, heathen, clueless.

Peter Jennings
East Sussex
April 2022