Seeing eyes and an open heart, and the discipline to sit down and write, I have found, are my requisites. Especially the last.  I've only recently begun to realize I have an audience, other than my mother, who has always loved my poetry. Something poet May Sarton wrote resonates in me.  She said, "Prose is a dialogue with others, and poetry is a dialogue with the self."

The few things I've ever written "for an audience" have turned out quite horribly.  I write; the audience will come—as it in fact has, with my poem, "scientists find."  In poetry, the subject is in charge. I guess that's my assumption; that the subject is there, possessing significance, and it's my desire and need to elicit whatever meaning of that facet of the experience is available to me. Not to someone else, only to me.

I think human beings by nature are subjective, so what they create is going to be, too.  Objectivity in certain areas of life is a goal to strive for, though I'm not sure it belongs in the creative realm, which is about cherishing personal vision and gift.  My intention and behavior is a "translation towards", as the French would say, and never a perfect rendering. Poetry's like that, too—not a perfect rendering, but as close as we can get to the truth we sense and envision.

I strive for the absolute clarity of words and images that will communicate most exactly my understanding, emotion or vision.

Though I have summer star charts and try to puzzle out where things are and what they are, I am not an astronomer. Looking at stars reminds me that things take a long time to be fulfilled (how long does light take to get to us?); that our universe is balancing, always in motion, not static; it's becoming, not finished.  Things are not "out there" but that we're "out there" too, is part of it.  I showed one of my nephews a map of the universe and he said with delight, "We're IN space."

Stars and planets keep me mindful of belonging. These insights help me stay intentional, attentive and creative. Being a mindful creator makes it easy for me to believe in a mindful creator. I also suspect I may be descended from Tolkien's Elves, who loved the night sky.

If I had to give writing advice to myself at an earlier point in life, I would ask that woman to believe more strongly in her right to a creative life, and to make more time for it.  If it was about anything personal, I would choose the same time and ask her to take as her personal mantra something my wonderful grandmother Janet Harris said to me when I was in my teens: "My life is as valid as anybody else's."

When you are walking a very non-traditional social, creative, and spiritual path, it gets hard to remember that, because you don't get validated in the usual ways. I have been enormously fortunate. I know I've made a unique, important and positive contribution to at least one other person's life, and I've written a poem that, after ten years, people are still reading, enjoying and finding good and meaningful. "There's glory for you."

Poetry from Pat Mayne Ellis

milk and honey

new bread
let me nourish you now
like rain
which is gentle
take, eat
this feast prepared

enter in to
thine inheritance
let the lips of your mouth
rejoice
like rain
which is gentle
take thou possession
of this singing land

let your hands be filled
with the sunlit fruit
of a shining tree
let me be to you now
the blessing received
warm by the wind-lapped sea

the trees of the field
rest in the light
take, eat
this is
for you
like rain
which is gentle

by Pat Mayne Ellis, from A Web of Crones, © 1986
===============================================
The mist upon the hillside

was suddenly Irish;
no more the familiar road
passed a thousand times
but Ireland once again,
always and forever
a part of my vision
as though traced upon
the unspeakable fragility
of the eye.
A half-fallen stand of
golden-leaved trees
is two places: Here
and then.
Two times: Now
and there.

I move, a universe
containing this world
and so many others
someday I may not be able
to tell
when I know a place
when I don't. All new paths
will be welcome under my feet
familiar forests
intricate with mystery.

By Pat Mayne Ellis, from Exit 13, No. 2 Autumn/Winter © 1989
===========================================================
Scientists find universe awash in tiny diamonds

But haven't we always known?
The shimmer of trees, the shaking of flames
every cloud lined with something
clean water sings
right to the belly
scouring us with its purity
it too is awash with diamonds

"so small that trillions could rest
on the head of a pin"

It is not unwise then to say
that the air is hung close with diamonds
that we breathe diamond
our lungs hoarding, exchanging
our blood sowing them rich and thick
along every course it takes
Does this explain
why some of us are so hard
why some of us shine
why we are all precious

that we are awash in creation
spumed with diamonds
shot through with beauty
that survived the death of stars

By Pat Mayne Ellis,  from "Cries of the Sprit," Beacon Press, Boston, © 1991

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BIOGRAPHY

Pat Mayne Ellis, according to a friend, was a Canadian Gen-Xer before the term was coined.  In 1984 she came out and REALLY started living.  Her friends and relatives learned to write her address in pencil.  She has been published in periodicals and literary journals in Canada, the United States and England. Her poem, "Scientists find the universe awash in tiny diamonds," has been reprinted a few times, was performed as part of a multi-media event in Toronto and is posted on the website of the NASA scientists who made the original discoveries that sparked the poem. Semi-nomadic at heart, Pat looks at the stars wherever she is.

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