Life Poiesis Collection: Scots Grandmother

Scots Grandmother

There was a Scots grandmother

Ma was her name

She had a whole family who came

To stay in her home

As they had no other the same

Five years they stopped

To reorient their lives there

She never complained but

Interfered with our lives some

Come and get a sweetie

Before you go to bed

She said as the mother

Finished telling them

To brush their teeth

Eat your tomatoes

No allergies you have no

As my face grew redder

And swole right up

No nothing wrong with

what we sup

She knit us sweaters

Jumpers said she

In every colour

In the green mauve family

Light a fire and

Clean the grate

Was my mother

Cinderella to her

Lone living mind

Father went to work

Each day a long way

To check the coal stats

And was back to sit

By the fire where

A mouse ran up his

Pant leg amidst

The screaming three

We had a fine time there

Under the lilac trees

Ma and Mum made jam

In the building with the

Big copper pots

Stirring the berries

With a huge wooden

Spoon soon hot

The coalhouse black

With snails on the sides

Was a scary place

When we looked inside

We played ball against

The white stucco walls

Cousins thrilled to

See it all

Mother bathed us

In the scullery sink

It was not as private

As one might think

Pansies grew from

The needles fine

Puffed with cotton

On linen mind

The sewing machine there

Was marked by a beetle

In black iron wrought lilac

With gingham cloth

We had just bought

Skipping was the name

Of the game we played

At school we tobogganed

In our uniforms in navy

Lukewarm milk

Was given by the teacher

Who later gave the

Strap to many she reached for

One boy went to the

Bathroom on the floor

He was caned and ordered

Out of the door

Snowballs abounded

Within those iron gates

And still I loved it

While trying to escape

Huck weaving in green was

Something we learned

Poetry became a thing

Actually never scorned

We sat on a stone wall

In front of Ma’s house

We counted car plates

And wrote them in our books

We ran in the garden

Around and around

And dressed our dolls

Under the hedges unseen

Our black-haired dad

Would call us in

With a whistle few

Have even seen

Christmas there around

The fire grate with hanging

Streamers colouring

Our plates was like

Something from a magazine

I now gratefully think.

Poiesis Life Collection: Flowers

Years ago, I painted a large self-portrait of a girl standing in her back yard with argyle-style grass. She wore one of my favourite childhood dresses, white, smocked, with tiny turquoise, pink, violet, diamond shapes all over. In her hand she held a posy of sweet peas; her gift to the world. Perhaps these posts are like sweet peas, small, fragrant, pale pink and aubergine, with green leaves and swirls going upward to the light.

Then I came across the word, poiesis, the blooming of a blossom. These words from my experience and from others would convey the hope of blooming, even of planting seeds of hope to bloom later in this time of post pandemic. Yes, my poems are what I have to offer the world, the poeises (meaning: production, formation) of my life collected here.

Flowers

Flowers grow in

The garden to

Delight us and

Sometimes in

Spite of us.

The scent of sweetpeas

Lingers in the mind

Long after their

Pink and purple softness

And tendrils are gone.

A vase of pink and brown

Alstromeria

Sits boldly for weeks

On the desk for the worker

The elegance of candelabra

Primula

Decorates the forested

Garden for the wanderer.

Wonder awaits to overwhelm

Those who walk

Among the pink trees.

Sweetpeas

Flowering trees

Candelabra primula

Alstromeria

All of these

Are given

With ease.

The garden grows

The paint foregoes

The weeds that speed

To thwart us.

The flowers will

Stay with us

As paint blesses them

With a permanence

That replaces their being

With canvas.

Life Poiesis Collection: Ephemera

“Birds Nest” Phone Photo DS

[The philosopher] Heidegger referred to poiesis as a “bringing-forth”, or physis as emergence. Examples of poiesis are the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a cocoon, and the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt; the last two analogies underline Heidegger’s example of a threshold occasion, a moment of ecstasis when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis#Overview

EPHEMERA

Artist Statement

We are here today and gone tomorrow

Our lives are but a blip in history

Yet what we do lasts forever

In some way.

As one cannot watch the

Grass grow

So we go about our daily

Ablutions either thinking that

Our actions do not matter

Or that they save the world

But they are noticed

We observe.

Life is made up of ephemeral

Moments

One deed

At a time

We cook

We surf

We drive

We converse

We walk

We clean

And garden

And watch

And paint

And write

And knit

And go

To the bank

To the pharmacy

To the office

To the studio

To the seawall

To the neighbour

To the sick

To the chapel

Forgotten are

The words

The favours

The anger

The listening

The praying

The photos

The plantings

Done daily

Ephemera

Like dust

Like us

Is what the world

Is made of

And what we will return to

Until

The day that

We rise.

I make studio work that is fleeting, that is ephemera, some never given, sold or even framed. It is light work. It is my work. I write. It grounds me in what really matters: life is abundant. So too is the work given me to do daily.