"My Mother In Violet Dress"

Some places we visit as children have lasting impact on our imaginations; we draw on their colours, their scents, their very essence, for the rest of our lives.
We store within us emotions evoked; years on, we remember the curve of a smile of someone we met there,the touch of a hand, the sound of footsteps on a street we strolled. The place becomes part of our creativity; it haunts and it taunts us.
For me, St Ives in Cornwall is such a place.
And this is a poem I wrote ages ago, after visiting St Ives September Festival. It's set on Porthminster beach.
It is, by the way, complete fabrication.

The painting is: " Untrodden sand" by Dame Laura Knight.

My poem is called “My mother in violet dress”.


"My mother in violet dress,
said:
“Everything comes in threes”.


On Porthminster,
three deckchairs in a line,
Me in the middle,

And I said:
“The sea, the gulls, the sand, they come in threes,
flowing, screeching, drifting.”


And my sister beside me in ruched pink bathing suit,
wet from the waves, said:
“The Aunts at Christmas, they come in threes,
Ethel, Annie, Ruby,
bearing their gifts.
The scented soap, their flowers,
the Bristol Cream sherry
for the three course lunch….”
And my mother in peep-toe shoes, said:
“ Things that matter come in threes,
things that mattered in my life….”


And with voice bright as lemons,
She held out her compact so that it glittered in sun,
renewed her crimson lipstick,
pursed her crimson lips,
and then she remembered...

a third day of a third month,
when my father walked

beside a woman with titian hair,
and their child ran between them... "

THIS POEM:MY COPYRIGHT.