Entrenchment & Tunnel Vision

(Finding the Way Out)

‘Triple Entendre’ (Oil painting on board by Alan Rayner, 1999) A lost, last, low speed train draws out of blackness towards open sky across a viaduct. The viaduct is supported by the cyperaceous triangular cross-section of a stem of wood club-rush containing air- and water-filled channels and framed by the left and right sides and head-on symmetry of three emerald and yellow grasshoppers fused by their antennae into a chaotic three-way attractor. The triangle is wedged between domains of grass and sedge, each with tripartite flower arrays and inhabited by grasshopper and sedge warblers with their fishing reel and grating voices. The traverse of a harvest mouse conjoins the domains and so in its own small, sweet way makes the interrelating, many worlds scene possible, suffused with sound and visual reverberations.

Who knew

When all this began

That we would get stuck here?

.

In this tunnel between hope and despair

This cutting of lively figure from spacious ground

This endless loop

This eternal triangle of reiteration

This stultifying daylight robbery of Soul from Spirit from Material Body

From which there’s no escape

Except the way out

That we can’t see

Through the open door

While trying to find the key

That turns both ways

Back and forth

Closing and opening

In good time that passes

From here to there to here

Out of step from the clock

That measures mechanically

From past to future

In a straight, graduated line

That bears no relation

To what it misrepresents

And so gets us stuck here

Not knowing which way to turn

Until we do

And all falls continually

Into and out of place

.