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Ann Staley — poetry

The Arts Center Exhibits:

• 'Portals' Winter Show & Silent Auction, Main Gallery, Winter 2011
• 'Call & Response: Ann Staley and Jenny Lee Fowler,' Corrine Woodman Gallery, December 2011

Artists Statement 'Autumn Portal,' - 'Portals' Winter Show & Silent Auction, Main Gallery, Winter 2011

By vocation I am both a writer and a writing teacher.  My avocation, all my life, has been the visual arts. I am not a visual artist but I have “the eye,” a gift from my mother, a Moore College Institute of Art graduate in Fashion Design. In everything about our home, from the plaid, kitchen wall paper, to the salmon pink fireplace wall, and including the gorgeous clothing Elizabeth Devine Staley sewed for herself and for me, my mother trained my eyes to see and to discover what is “beautiful.” She was, herself, a beauty, a “Jackie” before anyone had ever heard about Jackie.  Let me tell you how challenging it was to be her “too tall, too many freckles, too many feelings” daughter. Graceful only in water or as the field hockey wing, I could not follow in her footsteps.

My mother also wrote wonderful letters all her life.  So in 4th grade when she gave me stationary with my name printed in red across the top, A N N  S T A L E Y embarked on the vocation she was meant for – writing and the writing life.
 
The word ‘portal’ comes from the Middle English portale and, before that, from the Latin, portalis. It is a noun, meaning “a door, gate or entrance, especially one of imposing appearance, as to a palace.” Related words include ‘portage’ ‘portal vein’ ‘portamento’ and ‘portance.’
 
In my reading of this word, I think of a portal as being a door that marks a transition, one room to another, one state of mind to another, the moment between waking and sleeping, the shifting of lanes on I-5, the subconscious lifted to consciousness. Forget the ‘palace’ reference in this case. Consider, instead the soul broken open. Consider the poet Rumi:
 
Learn the alchemy
true human beings know.
The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open

I am honored to be included in this show with the folks I’ve admired all my life – visual artists. I thank Hester for including me and my mother for inspiring me.
 

'Contour,' by Ann Staley ('Call & Response: Ann Staley and Jenny Lee Fowler,' December 2011 )

It's quite small really,
5 x 7.5 inches --
a paper cutting,
scissor-snipped black.
But it's a whole world, too.

A woman wearing shorts,
holds a bucket, stands in grasses.
She is picking raspberries
to fill a waiting-in-the-kitchen
wheat crust, slightly flowered.

The wild berries surround
a nearby New York lake.
The woman's hand touches
the East side contour of
an entire shore line.

There's an inlet bay below
her hand, and a cove-y coast above.
A peninsula project itself
above the berry picker's head.
It's easy to imagine the canoe

or the rowboat, a bicycling following
the macadam of Edge Road or
Sunrise Highway, the road crew
eating lunch in cool summer shade
as she passes ringing the handlebar bell.

Afterwards, she'll return home.
Collect her children from the neighbor.
Offer a glass of wine. They'll talk
for a while till the dad gets home,
exhausted from doing-it-all.

The starts come out, now.
the children are sleeping.
A kerosene lamp brightens the porch,
fireflies chase each other
in the damp summer dusk.