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Maud Lewis: Ekphrastic Writing Responses, Selected by Sandi Stromberg

12/13/2024

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Picture
Train Through Town, by Maud Lewis (Canada) c. 1967

Editor's Note:

It was a treat to read all the responses to Maud Lewis's painting. Many of you were moved by her ability to produce joyful art in the midst of a poverty-stricken life. Still others were filled with memories of snowy winters, train journeys, grandmothers, and mentors. And finally, some wrote about their current climes and how they differ from Train Through Town. 

Happy winter or summer, wherever you may live! Write On!

Sandi

**
  
Maudie - a haibun
 
your tough life didn’t show in the vibrantly coloured canvases you sold for just a few dollars 
nor did it show in the wide crescent-moon smile across your face or the love for your man 
and his for you ‘til the end, still in the same house on Highway 1, its front door so close to the
road, a passing car’s tyres would send a tremble through its walls, shaking you awake, calling
your fragile bones to rise; entreating your fingers to capture life in all its pretty commonness
 
trailblazer
a small woman
and her paintbrush
 
I see you painted yourself in this time - you and he together watching snow fall to blanket hills you’ve never actually seen: every hue thick with brightness so unlike the white exterior of your tiny house, although the inside was a different matter - they’re all the rage now, tiny houses. The rest of us have cottoned on to what you already knew, that small and simple lets the sun shine and doesn’t block its glory, and can leave a mark much bigger than itself
 
pneumonia
in Canada’s winter
not surprising
 
Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman  

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is an Australian poet who lives and writes in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, NSW, on traditional Yuin country. She enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various excellent literary spaces. 
 
**
 
O Take Me Back
 
O take me back to childhood on the Maudie Lewis train,
Where firs are green and snow is white and ponies mind the rein;
Where there’s a ridge to every roof, a church to every hill,
The skies are clear, the smoke is sweet and no one’s ever ill.
O take me to the cookie tin that calmed me as a kid,
And let me live forever in the landscape on the lid,
Where clothes are pink or sunny gold and shadows minty blue,
And nobody has scary things they really have to do.

O take me to the softer lands of cotton and of thread:
The patient, careful needlepoint that hangs above the bed,
Where someone helped a child to make her stitches neat and straight,
And gently took it over when the tangles grew too great;
Don’t leave me in a place where crippled women slave all day
To summon up our fantasies because they know they pay;
Take me where nothing’s ever lost but all swings round again,
As bright and clean and painless as the Maudie Lewis train.
 
Ruth S. Baker
 
Ruth S. Baker has published in a few poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art.
 
**

She’s Coming from a Place of Happy Memories 
 
                                                                  "She preferred the colours just as they are...
                                                                    paintings made on cardboard, and little
                                                                    pieces of wood, sold on the roadside."
                                                                          The Moving Story of Artist Maud Lewis,
                                                                                                         Danielle Groen
                                             
                                                                    "But secretly, while the grandmother
                                                                     busies herself at the stove,
                                                                      the little moons fall like tears
                                                                      from the pages of the almanac
                                                                      into the flower bed the child
                                                                      had carefully placed in front of the house."
                                                                                             Sestina, Elizabeth Bishop
 
Happiness is inside of you!     my little grandmother would say
when I complained of boredom     my malady of choice.
 
She was right, of course     (little grandmothers usually are)
for how else could Maud Lewis     have wrapped her crippled fingers 
 
around a paint brush?     Frozen by rheumatoid arthritis,
fingers curled in a shape called  "pencil-in-cup"    she is smiling
 
in a photograph, at work in her home     a shack in Nova Scotia
without electricity or running water.     Art Naif comes from inside,
 
so Maudie smiles     creating scenes of life in miniature,
doll-house size figures     waiting for a train on snow-coated
 
earth, the train rolling through town     on wheels
that resemble peppermint candies.     Smoke from the steam
 
engine's chimney      puffs out the train's arrival
as a blue-suited conductor calls out     Prochain arret les amis! --
 
"Next stop folks! -- it's Marshalltown!"     & lovely are the ladies
in big-skirted dresses, memories of Victoriana     in yellow and pink.
 
One woman stands     with a gentleman in a top hat,
his bright orange muffler     warming his neck, though its ends
 
are whipped by a winter wind...
                                                             &  the bells that the children
​

could hear were inside them...     Did Maudie Lewis
hear them, listening for sleigh bells     as she painted the town
 
and its old-fashioned people?     Or dream down
a memory of horses and sleighs?
                                                              High above the train stop
 
a small white church     is perched on the horizon,
where the trees, tall and straight     are a forest militia -- pines
 
for the pining --     for a holiday journey with horses
and sleigh;     and look who's coming to meet the train's schedule --
 
someone with a dog sled; the animal's outline     (the back
of his head)     a folk art edition of Batman's visit, ears perked up
 
to help Maudie Lewis     as she paints Nova Scotia.
Soon more snow will be falling     and the train will be moving
 
but there's no end to the journeys
                                                                where Maudie's art takes her,
                                                                    transforming her pain
                                                                       with child-like perception.
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
An appreciator of Folk Art's view of nature, both simple and complex, Laurie Newendorp can understand why Maud Lewis's neighbours in Marshalltown felt her to be a special person. To create in her body's crippled state must have been a motivating source of happiness for her, why her art was evaluated as "coming from a place of happy memories."  Recipient of numerous Ekphrastic Challenge acceptances, Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, is based on the significance of poetry in art and life. Folk Art is often childlike, "And the bells that the children could hear..." is a quote from Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas In Wales." 
 
**

Childhood Memories
 
Maud Lewis painted her magnificent painting Train Through Town in 1967, the year of Montreal's World Expo. The year that takes me into a past that is still very present. The year the world opened up to us; the year the world came to us.
 
With its vibrant contrasts of hot and cold, Train Through Town makes winter speak, and warm me with childhood memories that the painting brings to life: Mr. Charbonneau who took me for a ride after a magnificent snowfall with his impressive horse seen through my child's eyes;my grandfather who took me to the station to see the freight train go by, never a passenger train.
 
The carpet of snow, painted by Maud Lewis, seems soft under the hooves of the horses and their cart. The carpet of snow contrasts with the solidity of the rails supporting the train. Light and fragile sleighs, strong and agile horses. Imposing and solid train cars with the horsepower of the locomotive pulling them to the great joy of travelers.
 
Maud Lewis painted Train Through Town just three years before her death. A rich and fabulous heritage.
 
Jean Bourque
 
Jean Bourque lives in Montreal, province of Quebec. He is French-speaking and a retired specialist teacher. As a retiree, one of his plans is to learn English.
 
**

To Maud Lewis Regarding Train Through Town
 
You blur as if through children's eyes
the stirring joy of their surprise
at waking to the snowy white
of fledgling winter taking flight
 
where barren tree and bravely those
who face the wind in bundled clothes
are there —as rumbling train departs--
to welcome home the kindred hearts
 
who share the soul of town remote
where misted eyes will rightly dote
on distant spire that speaks to hope
alive and well in those who cope
 
where simple will of faith prevails
as steed and steel recarve its trails.
 
Portly Bard
 
Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.
 
**

Time Travel on Canvas

More than just a pretty scene, more than an artist’s brushwork evoking a time long past, I know this scene because I once traveled there, to that past place. As surely as Maud Lewis did with brush, Mother DeSales, a woman nearing ninety in 1958 when she reigned over the study halls of my fifth-grade classroom, Mother DeSales took me skating with her in one of the small towns just outside of Pittsburgh, when snow covered everything. She was not deemed well enough to teach any longer, but she loved being with students and while we worked on our assignments, she talked to us.

I loved her visits, moving from my usual seat in the middle of the classroom to the front so I could hear her soft voice guiding back into her past , those few who were not secretly reading magazines or napping at their desks. It was cold outside; frost flowers decorated the large windows on the windy side of the building. Mother had a slack shawl around her bent shoulders. She leaned forward over the desk. Eyes twinkling in the bit of her little wrinkled face visible in the wimple, the room grew quiet, and she began to speak. I wondered which tale of her childhood she would tell. She usually talked about her calling to the sisterhood, but on that frosty winter day in 1958 she opened up another chapter of her life to us—her childhood, when on a frigid day like this she and her friends went ice skating at a local pond.

Her smile seemed to erase the wrinkles, and I saw her face, fresh and smooth, pink with cold, laughing, laughing. This dear lady who needed our help to manage the stairs up to our classroom, talked of walking past the train station, leaping into snow banks with her friends, watching a horse drawn sleigh carry the minister to church to get ready for Christmas, making snowballs to throw at the boys, as they waited for the train to pass through the main part of town so they could finish the walk across the tracks to the pond.

In her breathy voice she described how,  braids swaying behind her, she danced on the ice once there, her steel blades making figure eights. Dancing, stomping her feet as she waited for the train to pass, racing, making snowballs, playing “crack the whip,” and I was there with her.

When the bell rang for the study hall to end, I leapt up from my seat to help Mother down the steps and back to the convent. I wanted to hear more about her day. I didn’t want to give up the scene of horse-drawn sleigh, the train coming. I could smell the smoke, feel the hard snowballs, now, those were just her hands clasping mine as we navigated the short walk back to her place by the window where she watched the modern world go by,  a much less interesting place in my estimation than the one she knew as a child. I think even with her weak eyes, she knew which of us were listening to her.

I wanted to ask, “what colour was your hair then?” But I did not. Crossing the yard back to the convent, the magic thread to her past was wound back inside her again. I gave her a hug as she settled into her chair to wait until the next time she was needed in the classroom and I returned to long division, classmates talking of movie stars.

It's been years since I lived that moment, felt the magic of the past coming alive in Mother’s voice. This painting brought back both the magic of that day and also allowed me to travel once again into Mother DeSales’ childhood.

I wonder if Maud Lewis knew Mother DeSales or if she, Maud Lewis, simply also knows the secret of creating a past so alive we can step into it. After all, such time travel is the natural landscape of artists, poets, and older women whose eyes still sparkle with youth.

Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally, including in The Ekphrastic Review, published as essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time nominee (fiction and poetry) for Pushcart and Best of the Net. As a story performer she offers folktale programs and a one woman show, Louisa May Alcott Gives an Author Talk. You can find her on Facebook, Joan Leotta, or contact her at [email protected] 
 
**
My Next Christmas Card
 
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, 
There is a field. I’ll meet you there. —Rumi 
 
My next Christmas card will spark joy 
brighten with the enchantment of a winter scene 
welcome like the setting of dreams 
where sleighs 
skaters and passersby 
amplify community. 
 
My next Christmas card will display a time-honored place 
embody the shape of crinoline silhouettes 
glow with the simplicity of kerosene lamps 
underscore the old-world charm 
of a railway town. 
 
My next Christmas card will rouse the senses 
echo the rumble of a steam locomotive 
resonate with neighs 
whinnies 
and the jingle of bells 
evoke the fragrance of a pine forest 
enliven with the aroma of wood 
as it kindles warmth in a potbellied stove. 
 
My next Christmas card will punctuate colour 
comfort like a mug of hot chocolate 
hearten like a long-lasting hug 
be an offering of peace 
out beyond ideas of wrongdoing 
and rightdoing.

Jeannie E. Roberts
 
Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs.  
 
**

With Arthritis Hands
 
With arthritis hands like balls of knotted wool
Maud Lewis painted just what she liked.
With paint squeezed straight from the tube
On boards of wood, she would cut herself
 
Her miniature artworks are a means of self-expression.
Of her Ohio, Nova Scotia life out in the wilderness
She loved the railroad outside the family home.
The Baptist church appeared against the clouds.
 
Her blue shadows, images painted in the snow,
Show a willingness to live and survive.
No, you can't give up out here!
You got to smile and look up.
Nothings impossible
If you learn that subsistence is a painter's gift.
 
Maud loved the hustle and bustle of the locomotive.
The people thereabouts where she would sell fish
And she would sell painted Christmas cards
Life was tough, but painting was a means to uplift.
Others and, more importantly, herself, soul and body.

Mark Andrew Heathcote
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. He is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.
 
**

Trained Through Need

The Poor Farm watchman not alone,
in keeping eye out, on the doors,
for her of nature, entry point,
to jewels’ sparkle in the drab.
Provincial scenes of childhood still,
nostalgic, optimistic themes,
just as the first sales, door-to-door
of Christmas cards, her sense of cents.

He peddled fish as she sold cards,
her wish to expand popular,
so beaverboards and cookie sheets
were joined with Masonite as base.
A white background, infilled from tube--
so primary, no mix or blend,
arthritic size, not stretcher plied,
to even pride in White House size.

How apt that frame of postage stamp--
the plays, films, music followed on--
as did museums, folk art schemes
in Nova Scotia where she lived.
So much was grim except the bright
alighting on the vibrant seen;
thus folk break out of poverty,
through need, trained creativity.

Stephen Kingsnorth

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
 
**
​
15 Dec 1850
 
Dear Mam by the grace of God I arrived safely here in Philadelphia the crossing on the ship was most dreadful many perished from the fever red with rash and lice and delirium I live in a room in Kensington Street with Aunt and Uncle and the six Cousins every night I pray for you all to come through the great hunger o Mam! to see Norristown from the train so bright and cheerful a place it was great craic to watch the pony sprinting the gentleman away up over the snow and sparkle to the church it made me think when of a Sunday young Tommy O’Neill passed on his horse Branna and tipped his hat to me you wouldn’t credit it Mam America is covered with gold even on locomotives and houses and windows and ladies dresses it must be dreadful heavy I miss you Mam maybe someday please God we’ll meet again tell Da I’ll bring him a long smooth scarf the colour of sunrise and you a fine warm wool pink coat with a fur collar I’ll get with all the easy gold I’ll be finding here in America your loving daughter Mary Jane Gallagher 

Janice Scudder
 
Janice Scudder lives in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Prose Poem.
 
**
 

Traveling Through the Snow: a Scene
 
In this scene, people trust one another, leave their
            doors unlocked, to be sure. And there’s
beauty on the snow-laden hillside; in this
            scene, trains begin to replace the 
horse, but of course if we look anew, we might see
            other changes too. (I vowed
not to wax eloquent about the good ole days.) But
 
since you heard the train coming through, lets
            look again at the young woman in her gown--
see, she has suitcases at hand and is leaving the town; her 
            sister must go alone in the sleigh, up the slope
on her way to the church. I hope
 
there’s been no falling out. How have they parted,
            one from the other? And how smartly does
the vicar welcome the one at the door? She surely
            arrives shivering and wet, but warms to the gold of the
candlelight; she awaits the Good News—(it’s truly quite old)
            but oh, so reassuring to hear! The cheer
 
of the scene as the New Year approaches—the scene
            as cozy as a mini-hut, a laced glove, or a cup 
of hot chocolate set in the snow—it lets us know 
life continues well beyond the things new industry
brings, past wars and rumors
 
of wars, and other such matters. It scatters our fears
            and relaxes the stresses. We could, if we like, 
simulate, of course: hire horses and sledges and sew us
            long dresses. We could go back in time and 
pretend. Yet some things remain forever the same--
            the snow is still snow. (And the two sisters will 
forgive one another and mend, I know.)
 
Carole Mertz
 
Carole Mertz has poetry in various journals and anthologies. She's happy to be included in Luzajic's Starry Night collection. Her review of Saunier's The Wheel will appear in the January issue of World Literature Today. She resides with her husband in Ukrainian Village, a lively area of Parma, Ohio, where the youth paint scenes on the exterior of enterprises.
 
**

Train of Thoughts Through the Mind’s Town

The train ferries the warmth of firewood
and the pale siren of smoke into the soft morning.
Breathe in the swirl of mist, the pure drift of calm.
Older thoughts alight at their stop
and newer ones occupy their place.
Faith and dreams and second chances
clothed in pink and yellow gowns, brown overcoats
and orange mufflers, colour the present
while the past shrinks into pale blue shadows.
The town holds on its strong shoulders
the mantle of delicate snow.
The horse draws, through the white wilderness,
the sled of promise – tomorrow’s vermilion-yellow.
The bare tree stretches its arms to touch the sky,
as the sunshine of spring clothes its limbs of winter.
The train chugs along its tracks to the highway on the west,
makes the right turn, into the doorway of the distant future.
Emeralds and jades flourish in a forest
below the cerulean horizon of hope.

Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published or are appearing in several magazines such as The Orchards Poetry Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and various other journals. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple— have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature.
 
**

Simply Put 
 
It was a simpler time
the way I remember it
and our bright little town,
flat out uncomplicated 
 
no harsh contrasts 
or stark shadows,
no hints of decay 
or vanishing points.
 
In a way, everything 
seemed to stack up
almost magically
with fanciful stories
 
of the couple no one knew
but everyone wanted to be,
and the ever-hopeful figure
waiting at the station 
 
the thrill of a train filled
with adventurous dreams
set amidst the smooth 
homespun snow
 
a horse and carriage
flying uphill and appearing
to be leaping over a cloud
of smoke from the train
 
an evergreen hilltop
and homes on the hill
looking like bird houses
up in our favorite tree
 
the cat, who cast a soft 
bluebird shadow,
overseeing it all
from the catbird seat.
 
Linda Eve Diamond
 
Linda Eve Diamond is an award-winning poet whose latest publication is The Art of Listening Anthology, a free collection of listening-themed poetry and visual arts by more than 60 creative contributors. Find her website at http://LindaEveDiamond.com and The Art of Listening at https://www.lindaevediamond.com/art-of-listening.
 
**

The Memories We Keep
 
No one-horse sleighs ever dashed
through the snow of my childhood.
Tidewater Virginia was too warm for that.
 
What little snow we got was more likely
to show up in February when camellias
and daffodils were already in bloom.
 
We enjoyed our own holiday magic­ –
sailboats strung with Christmas lights
that sparkled in the harbor.
 
My favorite holiday memory is the one
Mama saved for me. There’s no way I
could remember being two.
 
The noise in the kitchen grew louder
and louder. Parents, grandparents,
aunts, and uncles crowded the smoky room.
 
The clink of ice and bawdy laughter
almost drowned me out, but Mama raised
a finger to her lips and pointed to me.
 
In the living room, I knelt in front
of the Christmas tree, tiny palms pressed
together, praying to Baby Jesus.
 
Silence. The adults wiped their eyes.
 
Alarie Tennille
 
Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City. Alarie received the first Editor’s Choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop.

**

sightseeing
 
the past as we paint
it with our memories is
flat, layered, simple
 
surfaces become
parallel, without any
depth, complexity
 
we leave out the con
tradictions that render dim
ensional space-time
 
was the sky so blue?
the snow so white?  the journey
so unobstructed?
 
all the shadows are perfect
ly cast and untouchable
 
Kerfe Roig
 
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/
 
**
 

Two Worlds
 
Small, arthritic hands
Painting straight out of tubes
Figures, brightly cheerful
Warm in scarves and cosy coats
Sleighs dash jauntily
Up steep hills of virgin snow
Firs in immaculate, pure white cuffs
Stand sentinel while trains huff and puff.
 
A life of poverty, of limitation
Your daughter adopted, fate unknown
Peddling fish and paintings
A world of pain and loss
Yet you created a cosmos
Of hope where joy is boss.
 
Sarah Das Gupta
 
Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK, who has had work published in many countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. 
 
**
 

Woken by Silence
 
With summer approaching
here in the subtropics,
accompanied by the unavoidable Christmas songs
in the supermarket, tinny voices singing:
Buy, buy, and buy some more…
Red-cheeked Santas with cotton-wool beards
in big red winter coats and hats,
while we are peeling off the layers
in the sudden heat.
 
Before my nostalgic eyes I see winter things:
Christmas markets, horse-drawn sleighs,
pine trees and snow-covered mountains,
steam trains huffing uphill, warm coats,
bobble hats and woolly gloves, fur-lined boots
that crunched their way home, skiing to school…
 
Going further inward, my real snows appear,
those nights of flurries and muted sounds,
the luminous dark, the sky’s crystal lights
sending messages only for a child
to hear, making promises only they can keep.
 
Woken by the silence
at three in the morning,
standing by the window, my breath
clouds the glass pane, the smallness
of my hand that wipes to see the wonder,
only to leave watery droplets.
 
The world is slumbering under
its new white blanket.
I hear the earth breathing,
In--
Out--
In--
Out--
calm and at peace. Finally at rest, preparing
the succulent feast of spring.

Rose Mary Boehm
 
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a Pushcart and Best of Net nominee. Her eighth book, LIFE STUFF, has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new MS is brewing, and a new fun chapbook has been scheduled for publication in 2025. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
 
**
 

Sparks

Blue light sparking off the wheels of subway cars in New York, flashing in the gloom of the tunnel, glowing in my sight like little embers of hope, little flecks of immortal beauty in the sad, dark city, blue like the sky when night is in the process of falling, blue like a river that might flood and wash everything clean. In Queens, when it snowed, the wheels would spark off the subway rails with a blue light that flitted inside of me like a flash of recollection of something I had always known.

Then one time in Italy, just a couple of days before the end of the 20th century, I was riding on a train at night as it climbed up into the Alps, approaching the border with Slovenia. Firs or pines covered with thick, fluffy snow stood motionless on either side of the tracks. I watched spellbound as the blue light sparked and sparked off the wheels. Without these bursts of blue, everything would have been dark. The sparks illuminated the snowy trees, flashing for a split second against snowflakes falling through the air, suspending them, freezing time.

I had left Milan without securing any Slovenian money, nor a Slovenian phrasebook, and my enchanted December train stopped in Ljubljana between three and four in the morning. Apologetically, I handed my cab driver a wad of lire, possibly way too much. None of these problems exist anymore, but those Alpine snowflakes remain suspended in the still blue air.

And then a year later, on a train from Kyiv to Prague, sweeping across a wide Slovak valley that led to the High Tatras mountains. This time it wasn’t snowing and the wheels weren’t sparking much, but there was a full moon and everything was covered in snowy moonlight, or moonlit snow, a snowmoon-blue expanse and then a vertical craggy wall, also of snow and blue. A train, and snow, and blueness, and light. Blue and white, and light and dark, and the ability to move.

Katrina Powers

Katrina Powers decided she was a writer in first grade. The road has been rough and rocky, but she is still a writer. Along that road, she lived overseas, learned languages, and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. She currently lives in Indiana with two small furry animals.
 
**

Picture Perfect?

I wasn’t in a brand new eggnog-yellow coat
and toasty mitts, bearing bountiful gifts
in overflowing designer suitcases.

I wasn’t waving at welcoming neighbours,
beyond excited to be in this wonderland, 
for this season of inglenook warmth.

I wasn’t blinking in pristine sunlight
as snow cloaked gentle hills, skies carolled
and the whole town gleamed.

No, I was forced from home against my will
in threadbare jeans and coat, penniless,
bone-weary, stomach growling.

I’d drained my savings, yet boats and hopes 
sank, trains bellowed and fumes belched 
in biting rain, minus twenty, darkness.

All my plans for life uprooted.
Like a horse rearing up. Lke a train crash. 
Like logs mowing me down to a cold shadow.​

Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman loves trying her hand at some of these challenges and then reading the different interpretations chosen by editors. She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf 

**
​
Depot
 
The old gothic station
now stores appliances:
washing machines and ranges.
Such merch the natural outcome
of a passion for plumbing;
run by the son of a son
of the banker named Bowen,
who once warned my mother
her account was overdrawn
while standing at the four corners
in front of the fountain
before it was melted down
for ammunition.
Once upon, green lined the sweep
of lines carting lions, gymnasts and clowns
carried to town in cars swirled with gold
tangerine and crimson, dotting the scene
on their way to the fairgrounds.
And ladies in their pheasant-feathered finery,
transported to tea in the city,
bid farewell to the men from the armory
proud in their khaki,
while they passed the pandemic
crisscrossing their path.
Time was, the station welcomed
the woods, maple and poplar, cast into caskets
at the factory next to the tumbling tracks.
With smokestacks of coal spewing their ash.
Ashes to ashes. All to the caskets!
The station, a building storing appliances,
now clad in graffiti waiting for business.
 
Cynthia Dorfman
 
Cynthia Dorfman draws from memories of her childhood and depicts changes in the world since then. William Blake's "Jerusalem" inspired her to write "Depot" in response to the Maud Lewis painting. Her work has appeared before in The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere.  
 
​
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