You Don’t Know Me

They said she’d never be an artist, but even though she was five years old she knew they were wrong. The picture they laughed at ~ a black bird flying up and up in rosy clouds, with a little tree and a dog to one side ~ beautiful.

As life went on with its ruled lines and columns of figures, she fed herself with clouds and trees, water and wind, and all she thought about was how to draw it, to paint it, for herself.

She had to shout down those voices that said she would never do it; sometimes she almost lost hope, but then she said to herself the words she had said that day when they were laughing,
‘You don’t know me. I AM an artist!’
Gabrielle Daly

What is a writer but a stone that falls into water?
The ripples spread ~ do they say anything?
Where does the stone go?
The sun on the page, the hand moving, the heart beating,
That is the writer
Soon to be lost in the water…
Gabrielle Daly

Dear Eyes

Thank you for giving me the ability to see
Without you I could not see if it is day or night
Without you dear eyes I could not drive
Without you I could not see the dust and dirt
Without you I could not read
Without you dear eyes
I could be lost, lonely and vulnerable
Thank you dear eyes for allowing me to see.
Anne Young

A Father

He polished his children’s school shoes every night
He grew vegetables to feed his family
He limped, leaning on his stick tap, tap down the hall
He made tea and toast for his wife
He balanced the tray with one hand,
The other supporting his withered leg
He sang classics with his daughter
He took her to piano and singing exams
He bought her a chocolate milkshake
He went to church with her because she wanted him to
He stopped because his wife wanted him to
He stroked his grandchildren’s heads
He said he would never give up the fight
He died tied to a hospital bed invaded with tubes
He was put in the ground
He was a gardener
Bronwen Barton

Flight

The plane turns down the runway, increases its speed, lifts off the ground, and I think: What have I done? Why am I running away? Again.

What is it that impels me to escape? I do it over and over again. When things become difficult, uncomfortable, rather than dealing with it, I pack a bag and book a flight. Like this. I don’t know where this plane is going – I don’t actually recall what destination I booked – but it’s moving, moving me forward, moving me away, and that’s what counts.

I cannot recollect how many times I’ve done this. I don’t know who I’ll be when I get off this plane. I don’t know if things will be different this time. I mean, they never have. The outcome is inevitably the same – me on a plane going somewhere, nowhere, anywhere.
Till the next time.
SS

Muddied Lives

Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Lao Tzu

What mud is he talking about? I like mud. As a child I squelched my toes happily through this soft brown substance at the bottom of the river. On the farm.

And then, out of dust my brothers and I made “delicious” fat mud pies. On the farm.

As I grew older, I began to realize that “mud” was sometimes used derogatively as a metaphor to express undesirable aspects of our lives.

For example:
“Stop wallowing in mud”
“You’re a stick in the mud”
“Don’t sling your mud at me”
But our lives ARE muddy. They are not a reflection of clear water, that’s impossible.

As it is with a river with its mud teeming with life, so “mud” is the stuff that embodies our own lives, constituting experience and therefore character.

Our mud is thick, replete with stories: Those of lost struggles and of unexpected victories; of love and hate at their best and worst; of dreams well dreamt and realised while others too fanciful for reality. And then, those moments of joy, of ecstasy. Such bliss!

And so it is, if we “… wait until our mud settles and the water is clear” before we live again, we have lost our substance, our precious, fuddled, substantial, muddied lives.
Gone. Lost. Forgotten.
Alex Angas