Bob Ward – An Expanding World

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Bob Ward
An Expanding World: Enlarging the dominion of human senses

. . . for the limits, to which our thoughts are confined, are small in respect of the vast extent of Nature itself; some parts of it are too large to be comprehended, and some too little to be perceived. Robert Hooke, Micrographia, 1665.

How big is the arena of your awareness? In the 17th C., the human understanding of Nature was enlarged by the development of optical instruments. At the beginning of the century Galileo (1564 – 1642) caught wind of a Dutch invention whereby two lenses working together could bring distant objects into closer view. Quickly he developed his own telescope and turned it toward the heavens.(1) He published his astonishing observations in The Starry Messenger, 1610. The Moon was not a smooth sphere, as had been believed since classical times, but was covered in mountains that cast shadows.
      Jupiter, the bright planet, had four moons of its own that circulated around it, like a small version of the solar system that Copernicus had proposed in 1543. In the light of this observation, Galileo became a vigorous advocate of the Copernican view that put the Earth and the other planets in orbit around the Sun. Unfortunately, that got him into trouble with the church authorities for speaking out of turn.
      However, Galileo also looked at the Milky Way, normally visible to the unaided eye on a clear night as a cloud-like smudge that stretches across the sky. Through the telescope it could be seen as a mass of stars, many more than had ever been suspected previously. The known universe grew bigger, though it was a matter for conjecture whether the stars were all at the same distance away or studded inside a huge sphere.
      One reasonable objection to the Copernican system had been that if the Earth moved in orbit around the Sun, surely the measured direction of a particular star would vary through the course of a year (a phenomenon known as parallax). Astronomers at the time could not detect it. Copernicus offered what probably seemed a lame excuse that the stars were just too far away for the effect to be apparent. He happened to be right, but it was not until 1838 that Bessell had access to instruments refined enough to measure the minute angles involved.
      While the 17th C. astronomers were exploring outer space, other people chose to create microscopes that enabled them to gaze into Nature’s finer details. In England, following the accession of Charles II in 1660, a group of ‘natural philosophers’ launched the Royal Society to promote experimental knowledge. They charged one of their number, Robert Hooke (1635–1703), to provide practical demonstrations at their regular meetings in London, a practice at which he was particularly adept. To this end he brought his observations with newly constructed microscopes. He revealed an exciting world and in 1665 the Society sponsored the publication of Hooke’s Micrographia,(2) which became a best seller, not least on account of the fine illustrations made possible by engraving on copper plates.
      The book has lost none of its appeal, because it brims with the excitement of his discoveries. In his day fleas were a common pest, but Hooke found them worthy of admiration both for their prodigious ability to leap and for their beauty:

But, as for the beauty of it, the Microscope manifests it to be all over adorn’d with a curiously polish’d suit of sable Armour, neatly jointed, and beset with multitudes of sharp pins, shap’d almost like Porcupine’s Quills, or bright conical steel-bodkins; the head is on either side beautyfy’d with a quick and round black eye . . .

      He is similarly enthusiastic about the louse, which he describes in almost heroic terms:

‘… twill be known to every one at one time or another, so busie, so impudent, that it will be intruding it self in every ones company, and so proud and aspiring withal, that it fears not to trample on the best, and affects nothing so much as a Crown; feeds and lives very high, and that makes it so saucy, as to pull any one by the ears that comes in its way, and never be quiet till it has drawn blood . . .’

      In paying attention to such creatures, Hooke not only extended the range of the physically observable but enlarged human sensibility. These common ‘pests’ exhibited structures that deserved respect for their ingenuity.
      In the final section of his book, Hooke also describes how he had turned his attention towards the night sky, making use of a thirty-foot telescope with a three-inch object glass. This had revealed “multitudes of small stars”.
       ‘So that ‘tis not unlikely, but that the meliorating of telescopes will afford as great a variety of new Discoveries in the Heavens, as better microscopes would among small terrestrial Bodies, and both would give us infinite cause, more and more to admire omnipotence of the Creator.’
      Hooke was not alone in studying ‘Bodies’ at close quarters. In the Netherlands the distinguished physicist and diplomat Christiaan Huygens (1629–1693) had already made a practice of carrying a lens in his pocket with which to examine ‘a new theatre of nature’. His young compatriot Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723) visited England in 1662, where it is possible that he saw a copy of the Micrographia or at least heard tell of it. Whatever the case, he set about his own microscopic studies using just mounted single lenses. His findings proved remarkable for what he revealed over many years, such as protozoa in rainwater, and bacteria in the tartar picked out from between his teeth. When Huygens learned of this activity in 1673, he wrote a letter to Hooke drawing it to his attention. Unfortunately, this was the time of the Anglo/Dutch war, and Hooke, who had an awkward temperament anyway, failed to answer.(3) Nevertheless, Leeuwenhoek began sending letters to the Secretary of the Royal Society in London about his discoveries. In all he sent over a hundred, which enlarged even further the world described by Hooke.
      In the second half of the 17th C. the outstanding scientist was Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Not only a superb mathematician, he also had a talent for practical experimentation. Interested in astronomy, he devised a reflecting telescope to overcome the limitations of the glass lenses then available. This provided sharper images for the observer. But he is famous for his train of thought which stemmed from seeing an apple fall in his garden. It was drawn the Earth by gravity. That being so, he reflected how far did the force of gravity extend? Did it have an effect on the Moon, or through the space beyond? Such questioning led him to develop his theory of universal gravitation, published in Principia Mathematica 1687. It was a theory that embraced the stars.
      Subsequently Newton published a treatise on optics in 1704.(4) It included details of his experiments showing that sunlight, by means of a prism, could be split into a spectrum of colours, yet another enlargement of awareness.
      As Hooke forecast, improved microscopes continue to reveal ever more detailed minute structures in matter, and telescopes detect events far away in space and close to the beginning of time. We humans find ourselves positioned between the extremes of the incredibly small and the immensely vast. Rather than regarding ourselves as mere specks in the universe, I suggest that we enjoy a special privilege. While not knowing whether beings on some other planet can do the same, evolution has brought us to the point where through our agency the universe becomes aware of itself. We are not gods, but we do exercise a power that could be unique. How remarkable!   AQ
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(1) The wonderful Museo Galileo in Florence, which is devoted to the history of science, displays two of Galileo’s telescopes, together with the bones of his little finger!
(2) In 1961 Dover Publications of New York produced a facsimile edition of Micrographia with a modern preface by RT Gunther, but there is now a range of recent versions available. Also it can be viewed on line at www.royalsociety.org or as a free Ebook at www.gutenberg.org.
(3) The text of Huygens’ letter to Hooke may be found in Lisa Jardine, The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Harper Collins, London, 2003, pp. 360-361.
(4) An Ebook edition is available from Barnes and Noble.

Amanda Moore – Beachcombing

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Amanda Moore
Beachcombing

If it comes back, I’m done
with clean living, done with greens
and positive thinking. No more
hats, no more sunscreen, nix
the meditation app. Once the wonderings
and what-ifs are settled, I’ll eat a steak
from any old cow, wash it down
with a milkshake. I’ll refuse
vitamins, rethink my early bedtime,
eschew herbs, sub whiskey
for green tea.

If it takes my horizons,
I’ll take back my hope.

But I’ll keep today:
his even pace and the energy
of our daughter beside us
as we walk along the ocean:
its endless churn
the treasures overturned
at the lip of tide, this place
where we and the sand
are the same infinite and small.

Bryan R. Monte – I Only Had to Look to See

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Bryan R. Monte
I Only Had to Look to See

Genealogy taught me to concentrate on the gaps,
to look for those missing or barely mentioned,
to fill out the branches of my family tree.
They were everywhere, at least one a generation:
the son or daughter who never married
and didn’t become a priest or a nun
who left town soon after graduation
and never returned, or who married
and divorced after a child or two,
then moved away to the big city,
no family to tell their story,
aunts, uncles, and cousins at a distance
who could only guess: What is he/she doing there
at the other end of the country?

Two doors down, on my childhood street,
lived an old man and his two unmarried sisters
for 40 years. Two doors up, the oldest daughter
moved to Seattle and sent back
knives with carved, totem-like handles
for her brothers and father
and chevron and animal-patterned fabrics
for her mother and sister.
Four doors up, the oldest son,
one of the neighbourhood bullies,
who held my older sister over an open sewer
and me to the ground while a frightened dog
tore my bare back, also moved out West.
When I was 22 and lived in San Francisco,
his father phoned to invite me to this son’s home.
‘Take BART to the end and I’ll meet you at the station.’
We drove to a two-bed, two-bath ranch
his son shared with a college ‘friend’,
(‘California houses being so expensive’),
when both were away. The ‘friend’s’ room
featured a wall-mounted college diploma
between two deer antlers above his bed, the son’s bath
an ‘It’s An Orgy, Come On In’ cartoon shower curtain
from the Does Your Mother Know? store in the Castro.

My family tree and neighbourhood observations
were akin to Galileo’s first telescopic mapping
of the Jovian moons’ changing positions

East       *         *       O         *               West
East                           O    *    *    *        West
East           *    *        O                          West

orbits he used to confirm heliocentrism
resulting in a life-long house arrest.

From this I should have learned the price
of being correct, but incautious,
extrapolating from micro to MACRO
in the ’80s, as I typeset my gay magazine
on the college mainframe and brought
my ‘lover’ to campus readings.
I only had to look to see to predict
what my professors would punitively deny.

Eileen Stelter – Holiday Cover

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Eileen Stelter
Holiday Cover

His work-life balance had gone out the window since that damned poker game a week ago. He was so sure about his hand until the Grim Reaper had pulled not only aces but clubs too.
       The stakes: cover for the Grim Reaper while he went off on a holiday to the Western Cape of the galaxy. The perks: he could winnow anywhere he wanted to—temporarily. The downside (besides all the death, the itchy cloak and constantly being called away on a whim): that awfully impractical scythe. He never knew where to put it or what to do with it.
      Halfway through another poker game with a bunch of Drivvoid, his pager went off: Soul in need of collection at the antique store, district 24. He sighed in annoyance and excused himself from the table, earning a few disapproving looks from the Drivvoid. Called away on a whim, indeed. He barely had time to gather himself, before the shadows summoned him and he walked right through the front door of the antique store, a little bell announcing his presence.
      Maybe the dramatic entrances cloaked in shadows could be counted as a perk, he thought, as he saw the human woman hunched over a lifeless, green-skinned Ethelian, startled by his sudden appearance. When her head whipped around to face him, he almost dropped the scythe.
      ‘Lilith?!’
      ‘Aidas?!’ The shadows whirled around him, reminding him to close his fist around the wooden shaft of the scythe.
      ‘You’re the Grim Reaper?!’
      ‘You killed somebody?!’
      Lilith shied away from the body. ‘It was an accident with one of the old crossbows. I knew I should have never bought those.’
      Aidas looked down at the body, green blood oozing out of it in several places.
      ‘Look at her blood, that’s not normal.’ Lilith nervously raked through her hair. “We need to call the guards.”
      ‘Are you nuts? They’ll take one look at this and arrest you on the spot.’ Lilith let out a sob and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘What am I going to do?’
      ‘Don’t you have a “good friend” who’s a detective?’ His words flew at her like glass shards.
      ‘Really, Aidas?’ Lilith looked up at him, anger now shining in her silver lined eyes. ‘Now’s the time? Newsflash: Memory lane’s closed right now.’
      Aidas held up his hands in defence. ‘Look, Lilith. I’m just here to collect the soul, that’s all.’
      ‘You can’t’, she screeched, ‘the soul is the only witness.’
The Ethelian appeared next to him as a milky version of herself, her four black eyes as wide as saucers.
‘You’re’ , she gulped, ‘the Grim Reaper?’
      Aidas awkwardly adjusted the scythe on his hip. ‘I’m the holiday cover. But don’t worry, he gave me a good rundown of things.’ He winked at her. ‘Now please follow me, I have a poker game to finish.’
      ‘You’re unbelievable.’ Lilith muttered and shook her head. ‘Let’s call the guards, give her time to adjust’, she pointed at the Ethelian, ‘and think this through.’
      ‘Alright’, Aidas hissed at her, ‘Call the guards. See if they believe your accident story. Your fingerprints are all over her body, there’s no witnesses, the place of murder is your private property. You’re going to have some convincing to do. But you’re very good at that, aren’t you?’
      Lilith’s nostrils flared. ‘Why are you being such an asshole, Aidas?’
      Aidas came face to face with her. ‘You took the dog.’
      Lilith held his gaze and spat, ‘You never remembered to feed him anyways.’
      The Ethelian jumped. ‘My… body?!’ Her gaze went down to where she lay lifelessly on the floor, an arrow through her chest and she gasped. ‘No, no, no, no.’
      ‘Miss, no need to panic. I will help you cross over.’ Aidas awkwardly grabbed her shoulder. ‘But we need to leave now, before it’s too late.’
      ‘Too late?’, the Ethelian sobbed. ‘How much time do I have?’
      ‘Every soul has a few minutes, but after that, they might not be able to pass at all.’ A white lie to get back to his game of poker. They did have a bit more time than that but to what use anyhow. Why drag out the inevitable?
      The Ethelian grabbed the reaper’s cloak in an iron grasp, as she kept staring at her body, then Lilith, then her body once more. ‘Oh my god’, she sobbed again and her grip on Aidas tightened.
      The Ethelian grabbing him didn’t help in his continuous struggle to wave the scythe. The scythe didn’t really do much except initiate the passing over the Thin Place to the River Styx. Which wasn’t a river technically speaking, as Aidas found out on his first day on the job. It was a city. And the Thin Place was a wormhole between this galaxy and the next. A shortcut to the underworld, if you will.
      He eventually managed to do something that vaguely resembled a cutting motion. The shadows that had brought Aidas here, enveloped himself and the Ethelian. From the corner of his eye, he could see Lilith still staring at them, as he kept cutting or rather clumsily ploughing through the time space continuum.
      ‘No!’ erupted a scream from Lilith at his next movement and she escaped her shock trance. Before Aidas could make his last and defining movement undone, he felt Lilith’s arm loop through his. He only had time for his head to whip around to face her in shock, before the shadows swirled around them and he felt himself being sucked through the wormhole, Lilith and the Ethelian holding onto him for dear life. Or death, he guessed.
 
‘Lilith!’, he exclaimed as they landed and he shook off both her and the Ethelian’s hands. ‘Are you out of your mind?!’ Lilith bent over, breathing heavily. Aidas blinked.
      ‘That was one hell of a ride.’ Lilith murmured, her hands braced on her knees. She looked up at Aidas.
      ‘You just died, Lilith.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘And you took your body with you.’ He inhaled shakily. ‘And you weren’t supposed to be collected, so there’s no place for you here. Oh my God.’ Now Aidas bent over, the hood of the reaper cloak falling over his face, as he tried to calm his breathing.
      ‘You left me alone with a dead body!’ Lilith yelled. ‘And took the only witness to my innocence in a potential murder case! I panicked!’ The Ethelian sat down on the bed, staring off into the distance—or rather at the beige apartment wall across from her.
      ‘Surely there’s some way to reverse this, isn’t there?’ Lilith grabbed Aidas’ shoulders. ‘You can send me back once we have sorted this and spoken to the guards, right?’ When he didn’t answer, she shook him. ‘Aidas!’
      ‘Only the Grim Reaper knows. I’m gonna have to call him.’ Aidas sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Lilith, you’re impulsive as shit, do you know that? Do you ever think before you do anything?’
      Lilith huffed. ‘You know I don’t. Otherwise you and I would’ve never gotten married.’ Aidas snarled at her, then walked over to a phone mounted to the wall on the far side of the apartment. Lilith looked around.
      ‘Where are we anyway?’ The studio apartment was rank. The furniture looked like it barely kept its shape and the wallpaper came off in all four corners. Lilith sniffed at the take out boxes on the coffee table, and grimaced. ‘Your place?’
      ‘It’s Grim’s apartment.’
      ‘The Grim Reaper lives in a studio apartment?’
      Aidas rolled his eyes and took the phone from the cradle. ‘He only makes two pence per person. And the cost of living on this side of Styx is insane.’ He started dialling the number he had been given for absolute emergencies only: 111. Emergencies not including regular death, the Grim Reaper had specified.
      ‘Hey Aidas, what’s cooking?’ Aidas nearly dropped the phone, when the Grim Reaper picked up before it had even started ringing.
      ‘Grim Reaper, we have a bit of a problem here.’
      ‘Oh I know, you got two for one, didn’t you.’
      ‘Yes.’ Aidas, looked over his shoulder toward where Lilith sat down on the bed next to the Ethelian.
      ‘I thought I felt a little something extra when y’all crossed over.’
      ‘What do I do?’
      ‘Change your mindset first of all. That’s not a problem, that’s a success. Keep the lady here. Show her a good time.’
      ‘No, she really can’t stay. She was not supposed to be here.’
      ‘Not forever, just until I’m back to fix it. Make yourselves at home, as a thank you for covering for me.’
      ‘You want me to stay with her here?’ Aidas glanced at the bed again. At Lilith, carefully rubbing the Ethelian’s back to soothe her. Lilith and him hadn’t slept in the same bed since way before he had filed for divorce.
It was then that the background noise on the other end of the line brought him back to the conversation with the Reaper. ‘Grim, are you in a bar?’
      ‘They serve something called a “coco loco” inside a pineapple, Aidas. I never knew what I was missing out on.’
      ‘Grim, can you focus please? This is serious!’
      Grim clicked his tongue. ‘You can’t leave a living soul unattended in Styx.’
      ‘Why can I not leave her unattended?’
      ‘They always see this light they want to go towards. But that’s the wormhole. You can’t let her go anywhere near that, you understand? Humans can’t cross over without proper guidance. They will be torn apart by the pressure.’
      ‘Grim, I need to take her back. She’s not dead and I have a life to get back to.’
      ‘Oh, your life? You mean playing poker in dive bars and getting ripped off every time?’ Aidas ignored his pointed words.
      ‘It’s too much of a hassle to describe over the phone. Just stay with her and keep an eye on her, I’ll sort it out when I’m back.’
      Someone on the other end shouted ‘Last orders, folks!’
      ‘I gotta go. You’ll manage. Just wait for me at the house.’
      ‘Grim!’
      ‘Sorry, brother. That’s all I can do from here.’
      Aidas growled and went to hang up, but Grim called out his name.
      ‘Wait, one more thing.’
      Aidas snapped, ‘What?’
      ‘There’s only one bed.’
      ‘I am aware.’ The line went dead. And Aidas just stared at the phone.
      ‘So’, Lilith raised an eyebrow at him, ‘what’s the sitch?’
      ‘Oh you’re going to hate this as much as I do, Lilith.’   AQ

Elizabeth Rosell – Father

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Elizabeth Rosell
Father

The dream is real. It feels so real that I cannot persuade myself that it’s not. Does that make sense? I know it’s not real, but I swear to you it is. I feel the wind in my hair, the earth beneath my bare feet, the sound of the ocean below. It’s a dream, but I’m standing on the edge, looking out, could step forward and fall over forever.
      I see his hands first. Slowly, coming up over the edge. They are withered, dirty. I want to believe they are grimy and muddy from climbing the cliff side, but I know the real reason. He was buried in the ground, but now he is here, coming over the side of the embankment. Of course, his hands are dirty. He had to dig himself out.
      I stand there, watching, frozen in place. I’m so small compared to his hands. Are they giant? Or am I tiny in this world? I don’t know. All I know is that while I desperately want to see him, I don’t want to see him climb up over the cliff. I don’t want to see him at all. I know he’s dead, but this is real after all, and I’m frightened beyond words.
      I think I’m small. The grass seems to be as tall as me, as if I’m a doll. Or maybe it’s just that he was always a giant to me, not only when I was a child, but even as an adult. I looked up to him. I guess in my dream it’s literal. I don’t like this, being small. I feel vulnerable with those giant hands reaching up and grabbing the earth around where I stand. What if they reach me? What if he crushes me, or throws me over? I should move, I tell myself. But I don’t. Just stand there, small, and unable to react. It’s my dad after all.
      Move, run. Must get away. If he gets me, if he finds me, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want his hands on me, not those giant hands on my small frame. I feel like I will explode into the mist. I will cease to exist. Not die. Dad’s dead, but here he is. I simply won’t be present anymore. The thought stops me in my tracks. Would this be so bad? If I don’t exist, I won’t think. I won’t grieve. I won’t swallow the anger at my father’s existence.
     I startle awake, lying in my bed made of grass. It’s dark in my room, with the stars in the sky providing the only light. There is an engulfing shadow by my bed. Hands, snaking through the grass that I lie in, reaching me. They encompass me, those muddy, dirty hands. I can’t see but smell the salt water at the bottom of the cliff, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.   AQ

Glen Wilson – Contact

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Glen Wilson
Contact

She is waiting to catch the crest,
a thrall to nature, or at least

to that part that overwhelms
with its double-edged rush,

and from a distance I watch
the sea break the storm wall,

see her pushed back until she
is claimed by water, her scarf

left snagged like seaweed
on splintered boardwalk,

near a broken phone, pictures
beyond viewing, drenched

by a want of experience.
Despite the warnings,

being told the storm is coming
is never the same as its touch.

Bob Ward – Life Abounding

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Bob Ward
Life Abounding

Bob Ward writes: ‘As an elderly man, I’ve abandoned using a fine, but hefty SLR camera. Most of the time, I carry a lightweight Nicon Coolpix, ready to be whipped out at a moment’s notice. Though a simple device, it works well in ordinary circumstances. I used it for the butterflies on a thistle photo, taken in Kelling Heath, Norfolk and for the earwig on the Japanese anemone photo, which I came across in my own garden in Holt, Norfolk, showing that sights worth seeing don’t necessarily require visits to exotic locations.
However, I used my Canon SLR D7 with a macro lens to take the Calypso orchid photo in Alberta, Canada in 2007, while celebrating my Golden Wedding Anniversary with my partner. What’s required for macro work is a steady hand and considerable patience. I just love looking into the depth of things, just as Robert Hooke did in the 17th century.’

Bob Ward, Skippers on a Thistle, Kelling Heath, Norfolk, UK, photograph, 2023

Bob Ward, Calypso orchid, Alberta, Canada, photograph, 2007

Bob Ward, James Joyce in Paris, Holt, Norfolk, UK, photograph, 2023

Jj D’Onofrio – American Baptism and No One is Listening

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Jj D’Onofrio
Amsterican Baptism and No One is Listening

Jj D’Onofrio writes: ‘As an American I witness each day, in various forms, two of the driving factors in our society: guns and religion. Far too often they mingle in a toxic dance of violence and belief. It’s a dynamic that starts early in life and matures, permeating nearly every aspect of American society.
To chronicle these examples objectively through my photographs, is in some way my attempt to provide a space for the viewer to examine and hopefully question these two specific underpinnings of our culture and their impacts on our lives.’

Jj D’Onofrio, American Baptism, mixed media, 2023

Jj D’Onofrio, No One is Listening, mixed media, 2022

AQ38 – MACRO micro

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Bryan R. Monte – Summer 2023 (AQ37) Book Review

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Bryan R. Monte – Summer 2023 (AQ37) Book Review
Bob Ward, In and Out of Doors, Meniscus Publications, Holt, Norfolk, UK, 2023, 29 pages (available from bobward300@gmail.com).

In and Out of Doors, by poet and photographer, Bob Ward, is a pamphlet of poetry and photos of doors and their importance as related to their physical, metaphorical, and even metaphysical associations. It is a collection of nineteen, short, rhythmic and sometimes rhyming poems inspired by doors. They include the doors of houses, occupied and abandoned, gardens, a clock repair shop and a prison, and even a door in a mountain passage way that leads to another country. Interspersed with these poems about various types of doors are six photos of doors or doorways, which relate directly to the poems on the facing pages.
      In and Out of Doors has two epigraphs. The first, ‘Lift yourselves up, you everlasting doors / that the king of glory may come in’, is from Psalm 24:7. It refers to the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. The second, ‘Knock, knock, knock. Who’s there, i’ th’ name of Beelzubub?’, is from Macbeth Act 2 scene 3. It compares Inverness Castle’s door (with all its bloodshed within) to Hell’s gate. They both portend that this slim pamphlet will contain a weighty exploration of doors. On the facing page of this dedication, is a close up photograph of an old style latch handle and keyhole, which also shows the beautiful vertical grain of the door’s wood.
      In and Out of Doors’s poetic narrative follows, with just two possible exceptions, the human arc of development from before birth, birth, childhood, (young) adult experiences of sensuality to later adult experiences of ageing and holding on, to the eventual surrender to death and a possible afterlife. The first poem, ‘Asleep’, occurs before birth. In it, the book’s speaker chooses the ‘nearby door ajar’ , even though some hinted it, ‘would lead to death.’ However, ‘passing through / to this world I became awake.’ The photo on the facing page of this poem is of an electrical mains box at the base of a tree trunk. The box is behind a little house with a roof, a door, and a lock, suggestive of an entrance to some Alice in Wonderland underworld.
      The poem, ‘Birth’, follows naturally. In it the child-age narrator is greeted at his own front door by a new housekeeper, hired in his absence, with the existential question ‘Who are you?’ A photo on the facing page features a traditional urban rowhouse, perhaps similar to the one described in ‘Birth’. Another childhood experience is ‘MR Vincent’, about a clockmaker, to whose shop the speaker goes to get the family ‘Westminster chiming clock’ repaired after it was damaged by a nearby ‘fly-bomb’ (V1 rocket). ‘An abrupt jangly bell’ announces the boy’s entrance. But even though the Mr Vincent can repair clocks, the narrator still observes astutely that ‘time / kept slipping through his fingers.’
      The next poem, ‘Doorways: for Robert Palethorpe’, features a facing page photo of a garden door ‘overgrown with ivy / paint flaking, signs of rot’ exactly as described in the accompanying poem.
Next, ‘Zugspitze’, tells the story of a mountain ‘gifted by the Emperor / to his neighbour going short / of elevated land.’ (A longer, prose version of this story, entitled ‘Frontier’, was originally published in AQ26 at https://www.amsterdamquarterly.nl/aq_issues/aq26-borderlands/bob-ward-frontiers/ ). At the end of an ‘ice-glazed tunnel / hewn through solid rock’ the tourists encounter ‘ a pale blue wooden door’ that leads to another country, ‘No passports; no guards / controlling entry.’
      Other poems describe experiences such as finding just a door in an alleyway with a £5 for sale sign attached to it in ‘Back Yard Sale’, an abandoned house in a poem of the same name, at the edge of village, which begs the question why the house is standing empty ‘where homeless families hold no key to life.’ ‘Letterbox’ is a quatrain about a ‘neurotic dog … that tears your post apart.’ after it’s dropped through the door’s mail slot.
      The book’s second section begins with only one of the two characters, the one on the left side of the page, which previously appeared paired on the book’s title page. Perhaps this is to indicate that we are now inside something, while previously, the poetic scenes were set on the outside. This begins with the poem ‘That Woman’. Here Ward pairs the common metaphor of the key to one’s heart with the image of the door to create cautionary tale. A woman has given the key to her heart to the wrong man, who

                  …turned the lock,
               threw back the door,
               and trampled in.

He also takes they key with him so that other men can enter her house/room without needed to use one so that

                  …new men step inside
               without so much as flicking
                ash off their cigarettes.

This poem is somewhat of a noir piece, from a different time, hopefully, for most women in the Western world, or perhaps not, and certainly not for women in the non-Western world. Other poems in this section include those about ghosts ‘unable / to pass through walls / erected for security, in ‘Frayed Agenda’, a breakfast of ‘two rashers / nestling together warmly / with one field mushroom / acting as a pillow, / and a half tomato (grilled)’ announced by a kitchen door thump in ‘Cuisine’, and a pirate, who goes to a ‘Paint flaking … castle door’ behind which a ‘guarded woman’ is kept in ‘Bluebeard’.
      In ‘HMP: Drawing Keys’ Ward masterfully describes a prison’s oppressive atmosphere in his very first verse:

               Like freedom’s death-rattle
               key clatter down a chute
               so you can minister to shuttered lives.’

Ward describes how the guards ‘clip the bunch (of keys) to a thick / black tightly buckled belt.’ to prevent a ‘snatch’ or a ‘scan (of the) uncovered keys / to copy with a make-shift file,’. It’s no doubt that this heightened awareness of the guards’ surveillance for their safety and of punishing effects detention is based on Ward’s years as a prison chaplain. In addition, these lines describe especially well Ward’s poetic style composed of short, simple lines reinforced with alliteration that strings the images together, similar to a set of keys on a ring.
      This second section continues with ‘Open Up’. It’s about ‘Pulling back the door of an old wardrobe’ that contains a winter ‘garment I no longer wear, / the zip has broken teeth, it will not hold.’ introducing the theme of decay, which is also touched on in several poems thereafter. In ‘Phlebotomy Department’, for example, the speaker is let in with an

                   …urgent buzz
               from the clinic door
               that summons the next in line
               to pass to the other side.

as if the blood work done here will determine life and death itself—which it may. Another poem ‘Entrances’ is about sliding, automatic, institutional or business doors which sometimes don’t recognize those who want to enter before they smash into them, a constant bane or my existence as a wheelchair user. Below this photo is storefront with the lettering ‘Dinosaur service centre’, perhaps a joke about how some younger people view older people who still patronise brick and mortar stores.
       Next follows ‘Entering’, which seems to me to be more about crossing into a metaphysical space rather than a physical one. ‘Entering’, ‘Letterbox’, ‘HMP: Drawing Keys’ and the terminal poem, ‘A Light Matter’, are the only poems in this collection that don’t explicitly mention a door or doors. (However, it is clearly implied in ‘Letterbox’ that the poet is describing a door’s mail slot and in ‘HMP: Drawing Keys’, that keys are used to open and shut cell and security doors). ‘Entering’ instead of discussing doors, discusses doubt and temptation. It describes a place or situation where ‘faith draws you blindly / under tension / like the strings / you pluck for music.’ However this advice comes ‘at your back’ and from ‘wooden ears’ with the poem’s terminal line of advice ‘choose not to follow.’
       ‘Holding On’ is about preparing for death. The speaker mentions that he’s older:

               than my kin gone before
               these are my bonus days
               until I’m faced by the door
               to the one-way passage.

      In the meantime, the speaker says, ‘I maintain my grip until / at last, (I) will let it slip.’ On the facing page is a photograph of an entrance to a stone structure without a door, perhaps representing a tomb. Here, the black and white photography brings out the architectural stones grain and weight.
      The last poem of In and Out of Doors, ‘A Light Matter’, takes place ‘At the entrance / to a Black Hole.’ Inside this place, the poet imagines, perhaps in the vein of the traditional Christian-held belief of the hereafter, that it is not just ‘darkness’ but ‘light upon light / upon light… / and angels dancing/ quantum quadrilles.’ (I’d also like to note that some theoretical physicists think that the matter that these black holes ingest, which isn’t release in gamma or other radiation, might be released into another universe to continue the process of creation there.)
      Bob Ward has certainly packed a lot into his little pamphlet, In and Out of Doors. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to AQ’s readers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.      AQ