Domestic Arts

Betsy Joseph

April 14, 2024

My mother traded a degree from art school

and her life on the east coast

for a future in Texas with my dad.

Yet she still found art, I’d like to believe,

in her daily household tasks.

Most mornings would find her

sweeping our back porch steps,

leaves and twigs rising, scattering

and landing elsewhere,

leaving a clean area to study

as if a blank canvas awaited her brush strokes

of oil paint or pastels.

Perhaps it was then,

when it was time for my nap,

that she reached for her sketch pad

and quietly drew, an artist again—even if briefly—

‘til I awakened and my brothers, 

rowdy adolescents, entered the house

and the art supplies returned to the cupboard.

The artist’s soul assumed a maternal role once more,

furnishing snacks amidst all the chatter

of school and sports, a bit of roughhousing.

Donning an apron—not a paint-splotched smock—

my mother began humming while working her way

toward creative details of the night’s dinner ahead,

yet another labor of love.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems which have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron.