Black Friday? I don’t think so.

As I drive about town in the day, I scope out places to light up at night. It’s not easy to find spots where lots of people are outside evenings of our cold Canadian November, but I found potential at Kelowna’s Adventure Fitness Centre H2O. There, people come and go to the pool and gym for several hours each day after dark.

So yesterday I headed to the H2O and found a little tree just outside the glow of streetlights and ambient light from windows, and there I hung some paper luminaires. I also placed a sign to help folk make sense of the spontaneously lit tree. In a basket beneath the tree were poems and tea lights for people to take home. I left everything there for a couple of hours. It’s hard to say what the impact was… part of the mystery, I guess. But I did see a mom with kids stop at the tree, read the sign, walk on.

Tonight I’ll install light at another location. Maybe outside a Mall, if I don’t get security after me!!!

Black Friday… I think not! (this is Canada, right?) Bringing light,

Lesley-Anne, SDG

This little light of mine…

So be it, at approximately 4:30 pm yesterday, I embarked on my first illumination installation. A little paper lantern and inside a battery operated tea light turned on, some additional tea lights noted with, “be the light,” and “shine on,” my poem, “The Properties of Light,” and a candy cane, suspended from the trees and porches of my neighbours.

I came home aired out and rosy cheeked and with a giddy feeling of having done something, while only a few hours earlier I was questioning the validity and integrity of my initiative (feeling rather dark in the beginnings of this winter season, feeling rather inadequate). Then I was reminded of a tiny verse that is fixed to the front of my fridge with a magnet, “Go in the strength you have.” Joshua 6:11. So, deep breath, small prayer, winter coat, cozy scarf, flipping stomach, I went out. I hung lanterns. I took photos. I saw the lights twinkle in the dark. And that was enough.

City Light Kelowna, and something inside me flames.

SDG, Lesley-Anne

Illumination…

Winter is here. Early dark. Cold. Insular and introspective. More difficult to go out and do things. Still, I know I must. I know my health (mental and physical) depends upon it.

I’ve aligned myself over the past 20 years with my faith community, Trinity. Sometimes I participate in event planning, or in prepping for celebrations, or I design and build things, or dig in with study groups, or I share words, or sing, or simply attend a service and listen, soak, learn.

This week I’m aligning myself (and Pop-Up-Poetry) with a Trinity initiative called City Light Kelowna. And I’ve been thinking a lot about illumination, physical and metaphorical, and how each of us can be a part of what another person needs. Tonight I will install my first series of luminaires in my neighbourhood. Each lamp contains a poem and some tea lights noted with, “be the light” and “shine on.” Here is the poem and some pictures prior to installation.

The Properties of Light

by Lesley-Anne Evans

We know forest fires,
how sparks airborne and high
light up neighbourhoods,
candle ponderosa on the ridge.
We know about heat,
how August sun in a bleach blue sky
sends us to beach and lake
and shade of backyard trees.
We know the warmth of a wood fire,
crackle lighting up a room
on a crunch cold January night,
the snow squeak under boots,
then tingle of fingers and toes
as blood rushes them back
from near frozen.
We’ve struck matches to a hundred candles
eyes shut, blown out a hundred wishes
for the spark of new adventure,
for illumination to our questions,
for light in the dark.
And we’ve felt a flicker
of something we witness in passing,
a small child twirling in a pink tutu,
an old couple holding hands.
Double rainbow, ghost trees, dragonfly,
cry of osprey over orchard,
the shadow banishing light of
human kindness, bright heat
of words or gesture, how in these
we are a small flame fanned to life.
How, with open eyes
and open hands, each of us
can be a light, each of us
can blaze.

Shining,

Lesley-Anne, SDG

Fall fav’s…

With cold breezes blowing and snow making its way down the mountains around our valley, I thought I’d take a look back to some of the Pop-Up-Poetry installs this fall.

And I have to say my experience of hanging poems like little pieces of laundry on lines between golden grapevines and flaming Burningbush was a highlight, the words paper white against sky blue, and the man with the dog pausing, stopping to read, the dog waiting.

Sharing my fav’s in photos…