Tuesday Poem, Crux by Patricia Sykes

Crux

I fell in love with purple there.
And shimmer threads. Bathed in light,
the high mass, music, flowers, incense.
No dirt in sight: pure, purely, purified.
The robed priests' day selves beautified
as if halo shone out of a holy picture
and pulsed in them, and I entranced with
the prayerful sway of a new word, robe.

I was a Godly child.
I ate with the nuns and slept with the nuns.

I used to sew the gems onto the silk.
Some of the gowns went to Rome for the Pope.

The nuns used to tell me, in years to come
think how proud you'll be.

If you knew my home life
rotten like my teeth
until I could spell broken.

Everything was made by hand.

The Hand, its A to Z uses.

My hand.

Their hands.
                    The nuns
sewing me back to myself.
Fabric, scissors, thread.
The stitch of my substance.
The eye of my own needle.
Its jab is all my blood.
This thrives me. This is fact.
This pattern. I make. I live.


Thanks to Patricia Sykes for permission to publish both 'Crux' here and 'Iambic Pentameter' on the Tuesday Poem hub this week. Both poems appeared in The Abbotsford Mysteries, Spinifex Press, 2011. 

This is a collection of poems based on interviews Patricia did with over seventy ex-residents of the convent which housed orphans, country girls and migrant girls, 'wayward girls' and older women in the three houses there. The Abbotsford Convent is now a not-for-profit organisation accommodating over 100 artist studios. Patricia spent a six month residency there while working on this book. You can read more about Patricia on the Tuesday Poem blog this week.

The Abbotsford Mysteries is Patricia's third collection of poems - all three published by Spinifex Press. If you've enjoyed reading 'Crux', please go to the Tuesday Poem hub and read 'Iambic Pentameter'. From the hub, you can also enjoy a diversity of other Tuesday poems.

Some afternoons

wonderful poets gather and poems and journeys are shared. The Word Tree, yesterday, was one of those afternoons - the open section featured readers such as Michelle Leber, Patricia Sykes, Lyndon Walker and new-comer Elly Lamb. Then Marian Spires took us on her Vincent trip - both literally through his landscape, but also through her own, internal landscape - her self-doubt, her fear entering a discourse that was already well-established and, above all else, her growing determination that this was work she had to do.

She finished her journey by reading poems from the various viewpoints of Vincent's women - beginning with his mother and ending with Sister Epiphanie who had been on of the sisters in the Asylum in which Vincent spent a year. The poems are terrific!

Great afternoon, great company - and so lovely to share these journeys.

Afterwards Marian and her friend, Liz came back and admired my newly acquired and newly framed Lyrebird print which I wickedly spent a lot of money on in the West. It's my second print from printmaker Narelle Oliver. You can see my print if you follow the Narelle Oliver link. It has one Superb Lyrebird with his tail thrown over his head, in preparation to dancing. You use the mouse to scroll across the page (it's on page 2). It's even more beautiful in the flesh, of course. And the Belgrave framers did an excellent job.

I love prints. My mother's late partner was an artist, who primarily made prints - all sorts from paper prints, mono prints, linoprints, woodcuts and etchings. There's such a foundation of craft in the print - but there's also room for that accidental grace that happens with art. I've watched a lot of prints being made - and made some myself and I love the process.

Narelle's lyrebird has taken the place of a rather faded mounted poster of Tidal River in our kitchen. I've smiled each time I've walked up the stairs. You can see the print here. It was very important for me to get this print because the girly and I saw five young male lyrebirds dancing in Sherbrook Forest a couple of years ago. It's the experience of a lifetime - and many birdwatchers don't ever see it. We stood there while each of them jumped up on the old log they'd made their stage and we hardly breathed while they went through their performance. It included all the noises - car door alarms, dogs barking, whip birds and bell birds while they rattled their tail feathers over their heads and stamped their feet. When it was over, the bird would hop down and strut around for a while while another jumped up and took his place. Sensational.