Different café, another time, a seat by a steamy window, hot chocolate with cinnamon, and I’m sitting opposite her, the last time we met, before I left and we never saw each other again. I was naïve, excited, eager to explore, and she was so much older, teacher and mentor. She encouraged me to fly, […]
Category: Poems about Childhood and Youth
Making Pastry
Oh, the anticipation and the reality of warm-kitchen days when hands touched over a huge bowl or fingers gripped together round a wooden spoon in snowstorms of flour and avalanches of butter eggs and sugar both tied up in aprons red-cheeked and bright-eyed mixing and stirring – baking and burning pies and tarts to tempt […]
Washday
I remember the massive washing pot sizzling on the stove, steaming soap and shiny bubbles, the dolly, the washboard in the sink. Barely room for two in her tiny scullery, I gripped her apron tightly, behind the comfortable safety of her body, away from the flames flickering from washday spits. Afterwards, on the carmine step, […]
Grandmother’s Trinket Box
The tiny ballerina danced to a melody from Swan Lake played on tiny bells when you opened the lid – she posed before a mirror en pointe, like I once did. A heap of trinkets sparkled, a treasure trove to me, glittering golden brooches, dangling earrings with rubies and an emerald buckle bangle: my Sunday […]
My Grandparents’ Neighbours
They lived in an urban terrace, side by side, with a stamp-sized front garden and somewhat larger one at the back, complete with washing line from fence to fence, a coal bunker and a tool shed. It took years to grow their individuality with roses. sweet-scented stock and peonies. They called each other by their […]
Darkness of Childhood
Darkness is the murk where a monster lurks and the gulp of sky in the depths of night when no stars glisten and no moon listens to the hoot of an owl or a wild wolf’s howl. Darkness is the smother beneath the covers when you get it in your head something’s under the bed […]
Scarf Magic
My grandmother never went out without a headscarf. She had plenty of them, all neatly folded on a shelf in a low cupboard, within easy reach of a child. In other words me. The scarves were mostly chiffon and in rainbow colours. They demanded to be unfolded and swirled in the air like fairy wings. […]
