It is saddest when it stops me painting.
I’m well acquainted with a square paintbrush head
and the faint murmur of pigeons in the morning
but this week the wind, like a warning, blew
down my chimney and it came with the cold
and my fingers didn’t know how to hold it anymore.
Until I spoke to her. I confessed it in the car of all places
because that way she couldn’t look at me.
She knew this type of pain, she had felt it too
and when she parked in the driveway we stayed there
for hours, talking it through.
That night I thought how lucky I was to be loved by her
and slept like a baby curled in the womb.
I woke, and there were plant leaves on the table, poppies
and safflowers and a circle of linseed and walnuts
in the living room. The oil was boiled with pine resin
in unlined steel cans, the canvas was ready
and for the first time in a while my hands were steady.
I worked without a chair, and the wind was still there, but
now I liked how it made the paint bend in the air.
Her cheeks and her chin I made red,
and the dripping blue that came from her head
moved to her shoulders and undulating chest,
creating the shape of an S, and dipped into the plains
of her belly. Then into the sweeping brushstrokes
of her face I added two eyes, parchment-white,
like the blossoms that floated in through the fireplace
and three coats of varnish to let the artwork harden.
I was her daughter, I was a woman
in a Waterhouse garden.
Published by The Poetry Business in 'Threadbare', June 2020. To find out more or to buy the collection, click here.
First published online in 2019 by YorkMix for the York Literature Festival, where it was commended by poet and judge Clare Shaw who described it as "a moving narrative and tender, delicate portrait of love." See the link below for more information.