Tuesday Poem

All Our Seasons

At the kitchen table I made paper dolls

extravagantly dressed, cotton wool fur edging

their green crepe skating dresses –

ice waltzes in a landscape so far from the mango tree -

my ship’s lookout – and the couch grass

of our backyard. A fragile succession of Charlottes

and Beths danced through winter seasons and on

to summer, water-colour stained empire frocks,

all out of historical whack,

until I packed them up for the colonies,

quoits and romance on the deck

of the sixties laminex, and at the other end,

the tea, the buttered white bread.

There are four cloth doll heads

smiling in a bowl at the flea market.

I touch each in turn, buy velvet ribbon,

a powder compact,

gilt slightly rubbed,

and some silky stuff that once

I’d have plaited and twisted into a knot

for Charlotte’s coming out.

Hey, queen of the kitchen kingdom

in your summer palace

waltz with me – 
your lead.

I never left you behind

we are always the same story

all our fragile seasons.

Catherine Bateson, 2013.

Check out the Tuesday Poem at the Tuesday Poem hub - this week, guest edited by me! It's a poem by award-winning Australian poet, Jill Jones. It's a powerful poem and I admire the way it skirts narrative, something I find trouble doing, clearly. I was going to offer a handmade haiku lino-print card  all the way from Paris to the first person who commented on both this blog and the Tuesday Poem blog - who knows I still might.