BLACKBERRY PANCAKES

My father and my oldest brother, both members of the defeated German "Wehrmacht", were still unaccounted for in August 1945, three months after the end of the second World War.

My brother, 13, and I, two years older, had found my mother and my little sister unharmed in Bohemia, were we had all been living separately in evacuation camps.

Now we were home again in West Germany, thanks to the efforts of the American Occupation Army. We were trying to live off our ravaged, war-torn land. During the after-war time food was extremely scarce. We scrounged and cheated, begged and traded valuable heirlooms for scraps of anything edible. Guests for dinner were not welcome, unless they came with provisions. Hospitality was dead.

One evening during that first summer, my young brother and I were preparing blackberry pancakes from a week's ration of flour, sugar and fat, and from the first crop of berries from a well-guarded patch at the end of our large property. I was cooking outside on a little brickstove we had constructed. this was our only facility, since strangers had taken over our house during the last days of the war.

My brother kept a watchful eye out for intruders. His warning shout made me grab the fry-pan and run indoors. Through the peephole in the door we watched the limping, but steady approach of a bearded, ragged individual. His long army coat was muddy, revealing toeless boots and dirty feet.

He knocked, and on opening apprehensively, we found ourselves in the arms of our unrecognizable, weeping father....  home from the war.

 - Barbara Boldt (a true story)

CYCLE

Never-ending,
Ever creating cycle of Life
Perpetuating existence on Earth
By changing her face,
Yet never dying,
Knowingly vying
For higher planes
And brighter futures.
--- Awareness brings solace,
My hungry heart.
The circle closes
And I am part.

 - Barbara Boldt (1977)

EARTH PATTERNS

Stone becomes Sand

Through the power of Water;

Sand turns to Stone

and preserves the evidence

Of

Life which grew from it.-

Living Earth

Is created from Dying Growth,

And so the Balance is maintained

And the Cycle Complete.

 

 - Barbara Boldt (1987)

FALL DAY IN LANGLEY

November morning,

Damp and gray;

I venture out on such a day

To watch the low sky kiss the ground'

And listen to the gentle sound

Of cedar boughs that drip with rain.

I breathe the air - again - again -.

My mornings - still, away from crowds;

I taste the earth, I touch the clouds.

 

 - Barbara Boldt

GAIA

 

She is my home

She is my love

Below my feet

In the clouds above

She gives me life,

I’m hers in death,

She nurtures me,

She gives me breath

She is the Earth,

She is my Mother ...

 

 - Barbara Boldt (1992)

GALIANO

The sandstone paintings are part of my "EARTH PATTERN" series. they depict the rock and sandstone formations of the coast and also of the Badlands in Alberta. this series of paintings is very important to me, as consider the works my signature pieces.

 

Every time I go back to Galiano I go to Montague Bay which lies on the south-east shore of the island, in a bay across from Parker Island in the Trincomali channel. It's a wonderful beach to walk along at low tide, with many arbutus trees along the cliffs, and wonder upon wonder to be seen in the unbelievable sandstone erosion patterns.

 

Robinson Jeffers, who was a compratriot of the photographer Ansel Adams,wrote prose and poetry about the California coast. this is one of his poems that touched and inspired me:

 

It is only a little planet

but how beautiful it is.

Waters that own the North and West and South,

And is all colours and never is all quiet,

And the fogs are its breath....

All the companies of windy grasses......

Pure naked rock....

.... A lonely clearing,

 

LOVE THAT, NOT MAN APART FROM THAT......

 

 - Barbara Boldt

LOOKING DOWN

Thoughts about my painting called "Looking Down"

 

This tree that once caressed the sky,

It had to fall,

It had to die

To nourish new life from within,

And let the cycle start again.

 

 - Barbara Boldt (September 1977)

LOOKING UP

Written with a painting that I painted called "Looking Up", after

seeing brilliant fall colours of trees in Stanley Park.

 

Raise your eyes up from the ground

Where dead and dying leaves are found.

Just tilt your face to look up high

Where blazing colour sparks the sky!

 

 - Barbara Boldt (September 1977)

MY KIND OF DAYS

Summer has gone

And left behind

A string of days

Of morning-mist

And autumn haze

And waves of mellow midday breezes.

September sun - her still warm rays

Are arcing lower,

Trimming days

And stretching shadows on the grass.

The earth lies crumbly turned and bare,

Bereft of summer's yield.

And yet -

The flowers in the field

And in the gardens everywhere

Are drinking of the golden sun;

Are bursting buds that should have died

On withering stems, their season spent.

Gone is the turbulence of spring,

Of summer's hot and passionate ways.

The air is clean and pure and still -

My time is here,

My kind of days!

 

 - Barbara Boldt (September 1975)

 

 

 

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