Poem: For Emily Carr First Peoples

Poem today was written at Goldstream Park many years ago for the artist...



Emily Carr.
Written at Goldstream for Emily Carr

For Emily

I can almost
see you now
Emily Emily
where did you go
your caravan so old
by the side of a rutted road
dwarfed by massive cedars

an odd creature
she was
paint brush in hand
always alone but for
her faithful companions
at her side

Emily Emily
why did you have to go
why did you have to leave us
with all these haunting questions

a question in every painting
never to clearly understand
the pain your soul must have felt

never to understand
what beauty you saw
and how your fingers
could create
such eeriness and beauty
from our earth.

I loved you Emily.

©poem by Nora Flower as a young girl

Written for Emily Carr, the artist. As a child I lived alone in a rooming house across the street from Emily's old house. It was abandoned and Emily had died before I came.

I was living alone as my parents lived in a village up the coast and I was supposed to go to school each day but I spent my days on Emily's porch in her tangled garden and run-down property.  Now it is a museum.

I wonder if Emily saw me there in her garden every day by myself skipping school. I felt very close to her as I knew every corner and crack of that house and old garden. I had no friends as I was from a village far away and I spent my time with the ghost of Emily in her garden. It was like a dream.

The First Peoples

the first peoples were so smart
the masks they wore
were the truth
the reality of it

the masks were the reality
the flesh is the mask
they knew it all the time
they knew the answer

what if we were not as we seem to be
all flesh and human bodies
what if we were just
as the rest
sea, earth, sky, sand
decomposable matter
is what we really are
see the raven mask
and feel the earth
roll and grovel in the mud
and be one with it
crawling naked in the earth
my friend, I met you
but I cannot say what
you told me
I cannot hear the
words, only the sounds
like the wind
through the trees
and the waves on
the sand.

©  written long ago by a young Nora Flower

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