TOTALLY OUT THERE

My mother Elsie Brimblecombe and my grandmother [my two brothers and I called her Grand-ma-ma] Enid Ross, self-published a book of poems called “Out There” in 1986. My grandmother who was 87 at the time had had her first poems published in newspapers and magazines during her teens when she lived in Perth, Western Australia. My mother is a talented writer of both poetry, prose and history. Both are/were too humble to push for due attention.

‘Out There’ is Heaven: ‘life’ before and after mortal existence. Totally Out There is a reminder that people have a choice to make their own Hell or their own Heaven…on Earth. My grandmother mentions ‘original laws…that devised creation.’ To me these are those fundamental and noticeable [but taken for granted] rhythms of life which everyone shares such as the heart beat, breath, seasons, tides, cycles of life.

Totally Out There Oil on linen 160 x 120 cm will be exhibited in my solo exhibition Pulse: Throb Vibrate Quiver Thrill Rhythm = Sign of Life opening tonight [Friday Oct 13] at Doggett Street Studio Gallery, 6-9 pm, 85 Doggett St, Newstead, Brisbane www.doggett.com

This is my grandmother’s poem:

Out There
By D.E Ross
1.
I do not cringe before the opening door
to Outside,
but brace muscle and mind
to meet
the open horizon
its fresher winds
the brighter light
undreamed of in the chrysalis:
each cloud a carriage
each breeze a wing
each star a stepping stone
beyond Time
-before and after-
toward the secret
of its source
and mine.

11.
There are no boundaries
Out There
but the original laws
that devised
creation.
neither north nor south
or east and west,
above
below
or here and there
No tides,
but streams of power forever flowing.
Time is not negotiated
wasted or lost:
an hour rates high in our accounting here:
yet a thousand years
could be held as a breath on the wind
Out There.

111.
There is no waste in God’s economy.
New solar systems
gather grace in space
[along with waste
from our allotted span of influence].
In God’s eternal meld
of warp and woof,
of foul and fair,
we have each one of us a share
in a new heaven and a new earth
aiming for birth
Out There
somewhere.