At this Time of Night

April 2021

To write a piece of poetry 

at this time of night when 

there is little that has occurred 

in the day to warrant such writing. 

I could write about the whoosh 

of the traffic on icy streets, or

the soft roll of the bus as it stops 

to pick me up. Oh, the tall man, 

40ish, waiting for the same bus, 

not dressed for the cold, carrying 

a multicoloured skate board;

spiky hair and bejewelled fingers. 

he was quiet and not quite sullen. 

I could write about the swish of 

the dishwasher as it takes care of 

my days worth of dishes, including 

the bowl that held my bread dough 

in the fridge for the night.

But it is getting late and 

I have much to finish up before 

I greet my pillow. Hopefully, 

I’ll find some poetry tomorrow.

“I can feel my Thoughts

Tiptoeing about in their bedrooms

Getting ready for the night.”

~ Prudence Gager, Bedtime

To Write

Pens and pencils lying still 

do not dream of words they 

will write. Quiet til an empty 

page is to be filled. When a 

hand reaches out for a pen or 

a pencil to write the truth, 

    to write of other worlds, 

      to write a Christmas card, 

        to write a grocery list or 

       to doodle a clown’s face

“A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.”

~ J.R.R.Tolkien

In the Company of Writers

Yesterday, wasn’t all tea and goodies for me. After leaving Government House, I joined a writing companion at Tuppenny Coffee and Books (@tuppenycoffee) at 1433 Hamilton St. This great little coffee shop is the sister location to The Penny University Book Store on 13th Ave here in Regina. Different members of the Queen City Write Club had been at Tuppenny Coffee since 10am, spelling each other off. The event? A Write In sponsored by Tuppenny Coffee. We were there to answer questions about our little group, and to do what we do on Sunday afternoons ~ work on our various writing projects. We chatted with people interested in our group, in writing or just curious. We provided great fridge magnets that are pictured in this blog post as we visited.

That takes me up to today. The Queen City Write Club met at our usual time of 1 pm on Sundays at the Penny University Book Store on 13th Ave. We were all focussed on shaping and putting together our writing projects. A writer’s life is pretty solitary when it is just pen to page. Doing the work of corralling all those words is so much better when in the company of other like minded writers. It is too easy to be distracted by food, laundry, going outside……anything. Heads down, fingers tapping away, pauses while stray thoughts are reined in, it can get pretty silent. Doesn’t stop any of us from asking a question of the others - another benefit of working in a group setting. 

It’s been a busy weekend. Ice cream on the way home was my reward!

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

Behind Closed Doors ~ 2

Or taking a walk just because!

The work we do at home

behind closed doors

besides sweeping the floors

or dusting every little thing

but reading an intriguing book

other stuff should's forgotten

Or writing stories, essays, poems

when the other stuff still calls

Or crocheting a new baby blanket

when the bed still needs making

Or painting an imagined landscape

when the dishwasher needs emptying

Or - anything that creates meaning and

depth in life behind closed doors

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”

~ J.M.Barrie

A January Smile

A January smile is difficult to catch 

when wind blows cold and icicles 

melt turning to muddy skating rinks tempting to huddle and sulk 

about weather’s ups and downs but, 

with reading, writing and 

Louis Armstrong, smiles appear as if by magic ~ calming within the storm.

“You are the sky. Everything else ~ it’s just the weather.”

~ Pema Chödrön

Selfie

Life is ever

imbued in lines

written about

birds and bees

flowers and trees

with no deadline

to meet 

save the one

I create for myself.

“A deadline is negative inspiration. 

Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.”

~ Rita Mae Brown

Book Review: Small beneath the Sky (a prairie memoir) by Lorna Crozier

Small beneath the Sky (a prairie memoir) fostered a very lively discussion at book club yesterday afternoon. Our own heavy Victoria snows did not keep anyone away. After all, most of us lived, walked and drove in prairie winters at one time. Some of us were even raised there in other corners of Saskatchewan. 

In just under two hundred pages, Lorna Crozier, a celebrated author, shows us the prairies and her growing up years. Intertwined, they can only be separated in poetry and in prose. Small beneath the Sky, a very fitting title for this slim volume, takes the reader through the generational turbulence of prairie life into her growing up years. 

Ms. Crozier certainly had ample reason for laying blame with alcoholism and poverty as much woven into her personal fabric as the effect of the prairies. She shies away from a ‘blame game’, however, telling the story of her early life, her parents and grandparents just as it was then. She speaks of her fierce love for her mother and father, despite their differences and failings. The 1950’s and 1960’s in the small southern Saskatchewan city of Swift Current were not unlike the experiences of many of us growing up in that time, whether in city neighbourhoods, farms on the prairies or any small town. 

Ms. Crozier states ‘…..I am indebted to Aristotle, who hypothesized that there must be something beyond the chain of cause and effect, something that started it all. He called this force the first cause.’ Her short poetic vignettes about prairie landscape and weather, woven through her own story, shows this reader that there are many ‘first causes’. Prairie weather shaped not only the land but the lives of immigrants and their families that planted and harvested our grains on this treeless, sky domed land.

“Wherever you go, you speak with the earth on your tongue, in the accent 

passed down for generations. It’s a lengthening of vowels, 

a dusty drawl thin enough to be carried some distance by the wind.”

~ Lorna Crozier, Small beneath the Sky (a prairie memoir)

Title: Small Beneath the Sky (a prairie memoir)

Author: Lorna Crozier

Copyright: 2009 by Lorna Crozier

Publisher: Greystone Books

Type: Paperback

Format: Memoir

ISBN: 978-1-155365-343-1 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-55365-577-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-1926812-27-4 (ebook)

The Sorting Room

In the Sorting Room ~ boxes 

filled with already sorted papers, binders and pages of decades, dusty from travel packed with naive writings and amateur water colours, outdated technology of music and treasures from friends and loved ones. These patient boxes and bags stand in assigned places 

~ waiting ~

for the next round of sorting.

“Every day is sort of a jigsaw puzzle. You have to make sure 

that you’re putting the most important things first.”

 ~ Julia Hartz, American entrepreneur

Six Months Already!!

In the past couple of weeks, each day my writing has involved some form of privilege. I have avoided using the word in an attempt to describe some of the many privileges of life. Not always as successfully as I’d like them, however that in itself is a privilege. To be able to write what I want and when I want. Writing badly, or maybe even with some skill from time to time. 

In the past six months, as of 1900 hours this evening, I have been privileged to enjoy the beginnings of a comfortable retirement. Purposely, I have stayed away from my previous worksite to give me distance from my ‘home’ for the last many years here in Victoria. Also on purpose, I haven't approached volunteering, until I my feet are really and truly on the ground. I've enjoyed this vacation city in my daily afternoon walks outside. In the first couple of months, there was some discomfort. It was great to have no early mornings unless I chose them. At the same time, the lack of those scheduled early mornings also left a void in my life. Different employers and different schedules had been a part of my life since 1968 when I graduated from nursing school, so it was not unexpected that this would occur. What I hadn’t expected was figuring out when to do laundry, how different my purchase of groceries would be, and all the things bookending a work life. I learned: Do the laundry when the hamper is full and buy the groceries you want because you’re not making lunches any more. As I write this, each of those gaps and difficulties are privileges. Privileges for which I am truly grateful.

Many conversations with nursing colleagues often started with: ‘I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t nursing!’  So, as retirees, we are stuck only with ourselves and no one to tell us what to do or when to do it. A privilege that is not recognized right away. But now that I have recognized it! Wow! Reading, a favourite of mine since childhood, is at the top of my list of things to do. Well, not quite at the top because writing is at the top. In short, I have learned and am learning what to do that is not nursing. (I've crocheted at least three baby blankets, and planning another this winter for a grand-niece.)

My colleagues blessed me with wonderful retirement memories ~ balloons, cookies (thank you Sharlene), brilliant and hilarious conversations, many fantastic gifts, as well as a beautiful rocking chair. I’m afraid that rocking chair right now is merely decorative. It hasn’t become my reading chair just yet and my brand new great granddaughter is 1,813.1 km. away! In my career, I was privileged to know and work with so many amazing people from all disciplines. In retirement, I am privileged to have a lovely pink bucket full of best wishes from my colleagues at VIHA and my family. To pull them out and read them again warms my heart. Will I be driving a race car (one suggestion)? Something I've always felt I should do, but writing a story about driving a race car would be much safer ~ for everyone else on the road or the track.

“Oh, the places you’ll go.”

~ Dr. Seuss

Inspired Writing ~ 2

Inspiration evolves 

when I slow down and think

when I search for a synonym.

when a sound becomes clear

when just right words pop up.

Inspiration evolves from 

my experiences

my preferences

my abilities and

gradual development.

Inspiration evolves like a balloon filling with air

so that it floats above the surface of the earth to be seen,

felt, and touched until it goes higher 

than I can reach but floats away 

and all I remember is 

its beauty but not the words

Inspiration evolves and revolves

but does not devolve and peter out 

into a colourless nothingness that

makes no sense, or sound, 

but paints my heart’s wishes 

in pastel shades or brilliant hues.

Inspiration evolves when

I put my back into 

an idea or a plan and

with elbow grease and

writer’s cramp I develop

a plan, an idea and have a project

that projects my self into the world.

Inspiration evolves in 

one more piece of writing, 

one more mark on the page

some that I crumple up

and toss into the trash,

others released into the sky.

“Do one thing everyday that scares you.”

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Within ~ 2

Uniqueness, a belief held that each of us is special. But only when we’re children.  When we have parents, mentors and other loved ones to tell us so. The challenge is to maintain that belief as we grow, enter and participate in the world of adulthood. A world where we become the adults that tell others they are unique and special. A world where efficiency and conformity, standardization goes against the grain of uniqueness. The worlds of art, writing, and creativity do not fit such molds, discouraged as being unrewarding. Unless of course one does something so awe inspiring that the ‘experts’ applaud our achievements and the rewards are many. 

Most of us will continue in proscribed lives out of necessity: putting clothes on our backs, food on the table and a roof over the heads of our families. We must find and nurture our uniqueness in relationships with others or in personal quiet corners. It does not have to be grand and awe-inspiring to others, only a spark of specialness that rewards us quietly. In relationship with others, we have an opportunity to share that same authenticity and create something quite beautiful. 

“[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. 

Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of 

external conformity; I can’t even find the model by 

which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.”

 Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism