My Mother Made Me a Cake for My Party

It was shaped and iced 

like a skirt for a princess, 

around an inserted plaster doll. 

She and my aunty spent hours

on painstaking details.

Another, a simple sponge,

had a section cut from the top

filled with dark green jelly, 

dotted with bought ornaments

(lilies, frogs). Easy! 

That was the one we children loved.

The illustration, included according to Fair Use, is by Erté (Romain de Tirtoff). Today in Flash 55 PLUS! at 'imaginary garden with real toads' we are invited to use one of his works as inspiration. This one, 'Costume of the Louis XV period', immediately threw me back into that childhood memory — though the skirt made of cake was more elaborately decorated.

You Were a Face in a High Window, Watching

You looked out over the back yard, checking.

Were the lines of washing still propped up,

a forked stick braced on earth pushing them skyward?

Face in the mirror – here are you, staring out again

in my own contours and expressions:

a living ghost. (I understand you better now.)

High over my life I think your soul will keep on gazing,

window of sky through to forever, while I live.
Watching. Looking out for me, not the washing.

A word acrostic for Play it Again #23 at 'imaginary garden with real toads', partly inspired by Ingrid Jonker's 'Ladybird' and partly by Bjorn Rudberg's 'time travel' prompt which asks us to include past, present and future.

The photo and its copyright belong to me by right of inheritance, and should not be reproduced without permission. 

Kitchen Memories

My mother’s sugar spoon
that I lived with
all through my childhood
and live with now
stamped EPNS:
only silver-plated,
its deep, round bowl
already well-worn
by the time she died and I
souvenired it.

My stepmother,
the one they wrote about
in the fairytales,
feeding my brother and me
mouldy vegetables,
stews with bits of broken glass.
(No we didn’t eat; not silly.)
And the rubber-tiled floor
I had to scrub on my knees
with cold water.

Darling Aunty Ev
who rescued us
and took us to live
in her own house
showing me how lemon juice
cleans an electric jug,
and when you take lids off
always to put them upside-down
keeping the dirt and germs
on the outside.

Sitting in a rented kitchen
with my first husband, Don,
hearing over breakfast
the news on the radio:

President Kennedy shot
and taken to hospital;
President Kennedy dead.
Eventually we rose
and went to work as usual,
not as usual.

Dutch-born Bill,
the father of my kids,
teaching us to savour
salt herring out of a barrel,
sauerkraut and mashed potato
and the rich warm taste
of Rokwurt dipped in mustard.
Encountering that again
tonight after many years,
I think my palate sang.

Coming home with Andrew
(my third-time-lucky)
after Darrell and Lottie’s wedding
where they fastened hands
and jumped the broom,
to a supper of coffee
with wedding-cake.
He asked me to cut off
half the icing from his share
to have myself. I knew he would.


NaPoWriMo Day 30

Helen Marjorie Holmes

How soft the roses bloom,
climbing the trellised gateway
under which you pose
in your pale blue dress.
A water colourist
retouched the print —
the only way in those days —
delicately, in pastels.

Your face and bosom still
have a girlish roundness.
Your smile is shy. I wonder
if my father took the photo
and it’s him you’re smiling at.
I have an idea it was taken
at The Orchard House in Spreyton
soon after you were engaged.

I seem to remember that trellis.
I think my Nana grew roses
in the gardens of your home,
my Nana your mother, who died
when you and I were both
too young to lose her.
Later my gardener Dad
grew standard roses, all colours,
in the home where I grew up.

But back then in the picture, you
were just a young girl
who knew nothing
of the future that would come —
children, war, divorce....
Now there are very few left
who remember you at all, Mum,
and none but me, I think, to recall
even the picture, let alone the girl.


April PAD Challenge 19
Prompt: A poem about someone, their name as title.
(I chose her maiden name, the one she had at the time of the photo.)

Poets Are Losing Their Mothers

Kris in Melbourne
Donall in London.
A mother in Ireland, visited
just before the last.
A mother from Alexandria,
settled in Dorset, and now
the son will wait
and visit siblings later.

Last year it was Tony
in Manchester, with all
those grieving haiku.
Neil in Austin, Texas
has written of it too.
Neil grew up in Canada;
I guess his Mum died there.
He didn’t say,
had deeper things to say.

Of course they write of this.
Some include photos:
slim, beautiful, young mother
smiling. When my Mum died
my cousin pressed on me
a photo of her old:
skeletal, crouched, forcing
a smile through pain.
Afterwards I tore it up.

There is nothing to say
that touches the death
of your mother. That is where
your life came from. That
is your source of body nurture
even if you weren’t wanted
(and most of us were). I
was never more confronted.


NaPoWriMo Day 4