Painting my mother

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.

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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.

yorkmix.com/york-literature-festival-yorkmix-poetry-competition-2019-meet-the-winners/