The Lace Maker
I found the brown hessian lace cushion
in the loft wrapped in crumpled paper
the pattern and pins still in place
wooden bobbins, one with buttons
on the metal ring instead of
the more traditional spangles
a tiny flat mother-of pearl button
from a nightgown, another cut
from a man’s shirt, a round brass metal
moulded button from a soldier’s
uniform.
Fine white cotton led to the last
twist in the pattern that her wrinkled
brown hands would ever make.
I’ve Just discovered there have been 100k views and 48k visitors on this blog in ten years.
So that’s not bad, even if some people have clicked and I was not what they wanted. No I don’t make money, the days when I did some journalism and was paid for play I wrote have long gone!
But I love creating things, painting, puppets, a new garden and I can get lucky and sell a few books, or get a small fee for a reading.
The main attraction is that it has helped me cope with the grief of losing my mother, the complexity of living in a new area, giving up my job as a therapist and living with my long term partner for the first time.
I based the poem on one of my mother’s lace cushions. She had taught herself lace making very late in life and also collected old lace bobbins
An award-winning blog 
for a ‘blog that brightens our day’
Ann Perrin 