The Tailor

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written for Shay’s Word Garden & The Sunday Muse #250

She was always explaining
fingers busy like a shiver

in bare branches.
She said, watch 

how autumn leaves her jewellery 
in the grass.

In nature, she said
ripening is not uniform.

You have the pink-cheeked 
leaders, ardent and pretty;

or the green speckled crowd -
matt. Quiet. Like Josephine pears

waiting for a frost.
Her needle and thread were

ever-present; as if she stowed
them behind her ear

loved with bite-marks
like a pencil. Sometimes, 

she said, an apple topples
humpty dumpty funny,

a chubby dumpling 
on the orchard floor

and all the king’s medics,
she smiled, arrive 

in peculiar ambulances
patrolling the rows

to mend wounds
and darn dainty egos.

Her orange thread
capered between her fingers

like the March wind,
tangy and sure.

Employ a bold stitch,
she insisted

it’s marvellous for dignity -
lucky as a kiss.

And any fallen apple
will be proud 

to be seen by its mother

Published by abigfatcanofworms

We all walk in the dark. But if we hold hands, perhaps the dark won't be as scary.

Published

24 thoughts on “The Tailor”

  3. Absolutely splendid. The type of poetry that just draws you in and you linger …. delighting in the images painted by such skillful word-smithing. Of course, I’m partial to the theme you’ve chosen and the way you’ve told this tale – so perhaps I’m biased, but this piece falls into my “I wish I had written this” category. Superb. Brava!

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  4. Ah! This is a delight through and through, Jo! The tailor woman “as if she stowed them behind her ear” is such a vivid character, so fanciful and yet the reader feels as if they know her. I adored the funny humpty dumpty falls and the medics in the rows. Finally, the wrap-up about the mothers is just so sweet and smile-making. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

    –Shay

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  6. Wonderful, Worms: I love your idiolect, its warmth and quirk, its girth of references; no one writes like you, except Les Murray; I’ve read this three or four time s and get more from it on each reading; but who are ‘the king’s medics’ ?

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    1. Thank you, John!!! THat is a most lovely comment. THe “king’s medics” is a reference back to humpty dumpty “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men”. One of the words to include was ambulance so I threw medics in. Anyway, the horses and men couldn’t put humpty together again so I figured it was excusable. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

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