A poem for mothers

This poem was written after taking a walk up to Ballysnod, a lovely spot close to where I live in East Antrim. The hedges had just been cut and there was still some measure of lockdown quiet. I approached my granny's old house and thought of what has been handed down to me from the women in my family and society. Alas, I have no sewing skills!

Dance of Cow Parsley

Scent of mother’s milk, 
laced hook and eye
onto collars darned
in linen yarn, I necklace
you onto paper
and dance – dress
umbellifer 
in green fields, soundless
of the cock, bereft
of the breeze of barley.
Gorse cut back –
melancholy
saffron hemming
hedges – half-petal
embroidery birthed
after fire. I climb
with a maternal line
over bleach greens.
Supping. Stitching. Scribing.

Angeline King

Published in Community Arts Partnership, Heartland, 2020/21

Image: Firelight, Alice Pike Barney, 1952, Smithsonian American Art Museum.