Just Gettin' My Work On, She'd Say Poem by Mark Heathcote

'Just gettin' my work on, ' she'd say.
Painting almost anything and everything
The stove the house like a busy little mouse
Gnawing out canvas boards on a little saw
To paint for customers to buy and later ignore.
Burn to start the coalfire.

Folk painter Maud Lewis never took
One art class and never visited an art gallery,
But painted Christmas cards full of joy,
That fills our senses with childhood memories
unbridled innocence sings forgetting her troubles.
Even with inflammation in her frozen joints

Even though poor Maud Lewis who had (JRA)
Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and a drunken husband
Who wouldn't pay for electricity or running water?
Maud sold fish and cards door to door.
And smiled like a child on Christmas day,
Like a child, you never saw or will again.

Maud lived on a side road in Marshalltown.
Some called it 'The Gingerbread House.'
Hunched and gnarled by illness and time
She had a grin and smile that spoke of grit.
'Just gettin' my work on, ' she'd say.
Sawing -another board to paint a train leaving town.

I don't believe she ever complained.
Did everything she painted her way
Painting birdsong isn't easy.
You've got to have just the right tune.
The right tune playing in your head
A distant woodpecker said there's nothing you can learn in school.
It's a state of mind painting the world this way so strong.