Make and Mend
I remember the wooden clothes horse,
the ironing board and pungent hiss of steam
when stainlessly hot steel met moistened cloth.
The wooden darning egg in the sewing-basket
made from a fabric-covered cardboard box.
The booklet of cloth, each leaf containing needles
of different sizes and the box of pins
and safety-pins. The tin of buttons.
The wooden reels of many-coloured threads,
sewing-machine and its excited bobbin,
the pinking-shears with their serrated edges.
The concentration on your motherly face
as first you licked the cotton straight and then
threaded the filament through the needle’s eye.
I can imagine you at work tonight
under the lamp-light of an Anglepoise,
that frown of concentration on your face,
sewing or darning to the radio
and yet it’s over sixty years ago
and I have only memories of you now,
till love that turns to loss is love again.
His poems have won a Gregory Award and First Prize in the TLS/ Blackwells Competition. His work has also been widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies as well as being broadcast on radio both in the UK and the US. A selection was included by Faber in Poetry Introduction 5. He has read his poems at over 50 venues and at various literary festivals. He has judged poetry prizes and run creative writing groups. He has lectured on, and taught, literature and History of Art.