Rosy started the digital ball rolling on March 25th with ‘a poem for a sketch swap’ email
Clothes My Mother Wore Even during 'The Emergency' when utility clothes were simple fabrics, darker colours our mother wore them well. I remember nineteen forty nine the New Look was all the fashion she bought a long blue skirt that showed off her slim figure. A year later she remarried wore a pink and grey soft tweed outfit, silk-trimmed hat, she looked a picture. On their small dairy farm fetching cows, churning butter feeding geese, hens, ducks, she never looked dowdy and when I was coming to stay she would call me to say “Please bring a dress, Rosy I've invited friends to meet you.” Dear Mum, my last memories, you in your flowery flannel nightgown me at your hospital bedside your words of love, your smile.
I responded with this Tree I’d sketch during my daily escape to the woods
And Rosy wrote back Sisterland Mary and Rosy, little giggling girls summers in Blackrock Baths steam train to Killiney Beach, two trams to Dublin Zoo. We helped the elephant keeper scrub Sarah with pumice stone I was standing at her rear-side when she stepped back on my toe. Bike rides to the RDS change our library books and Gran's who recited poems and speeches of Shakespeare, Shelley, Milton yet asked us to bring her piffle detectives of that era Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot. Now we are in our eighties living almost next door looking out for one another as my sister's memory fades.
