4. W.I.H.E. Festival: Re-Member - Miriam King - Brighton, England

RE: Member

by Miriam (mim) King

August 2020

Standing at the doorway,

…..waiting…..

a coming back together,

the pieces joined into a -

picture,

a memory.

I re:member – eyes

I re:member – words

I re:member – textures

I re:member – touch

I re:member – sounds

I re:member – joys

I re:member – sadness

I re:member – expectations

I re:member – disappointments

I re:member – surprises

I re:member – delight

I re:member – knowingness

I re:member – …….being….

1/ Re: Member –

Clouds, floating in blue

through the fringing of the pram hood.

2/ Re: Member –

The flap, flop, whack, splat,

fall – squelch, squash, then

something on the table, too

high up for me to see,

other than newspaper wrapping up a…something

and it turning,

red.

3/ Re: Member –

Picnic blanket army surplus,

too little to yet speak words, 

and falling back, rough grey sides

around me-

soft sky above, 

sand dune below.

Being swung from side to side,

like a forgotten jam pot or deposit 

of crumbs –

and wanting to cry out: “don’t ever stop doing this!!”

Yet laughing and laughing, a belly full of giggles.

4/ Re: Member –

A metal swing, clinking and clanking chains,

chipped and flaking green paintwork.

Feet kicking the ground,

grass scuffed, into earth.

That London, clay like Thames valley earth.

5/ Re: Member –

Making butterflies from fallen apple blossom,

Sellotape and string, fluttering in the East Acton air.

Washing my face with the first dew

on May Day morning.

6/ Re: Member –

Letting my hair grow and grow-

toenails and fingernails-

Keep them, don’t snip them!!

And a wart, glued in to a diary.

7/ Re: Member –

The girl in the playground,

by the school wall-

Little five-year-old fingers prising the holes in the bricks,

searching for spiders.

No time for running around and playing

‘tag’.

8/ Re: Member –

Wishing to be “Marina,

Aqua Marina”,

and never having to speak,

only with one’s eyes.

9/ Re: Member –

Not wanting to eat,

my chocolate Easter Eggs,

yet keeping them, hoarding them,

as all too perfect to break in to,

to break open, and to eat.

10/ Re: Member –

Preferring to read books

to playing with other children.

My inner world more expansive,

than following the whims of another

(child’s) game. 

11/ Re: Member –

Scribbling in the margin of

the Beano. Blue biro.

Too shy and inadequate of words to

chat and converse with the boy

who’d come to visit me, at my friend’s house,

in

Daffodil Street.

12/ Re: Member –

Watching a Sunday afternoon film on TV,

and realising I wished to be an artist,

(or was one already). 

At 16 years old, getting myself alone

to Amsterdam,

to stand in front of those paintings 

for real.

13/ Re: Member –

Bright lights and orbs shifting

alongside of me, above the Thames,

when we walked west together to the

Rutland.

This shimmering other realm, more

vivid

and absorbing, than the young man

at my side.

14/ Re: Member –

Slipping away. Wondering.

Eventually finding a way with

words - 

whilst -

wandering the World.

To “Re: Member” –

A coming back together…

to gather together parts of the whole.

To reform, the form,

fallen away like leaves,

that constitute the earth I grew from.