This poem is from my book Motherhood Statement – a book of ekphrastic poems based on photos, as an homage to my mother Dorothy Eileen Throssell.

A Tiny Window (from Motherhood Statement)

There is a woman drawing on the beach

Beautiful, in a wild mermaid way

Not young, but un-lined, long-haired

The youthful uniform – Bonds tee – shirt, brown

She looks stern, like the debris of sea-litter behind

Or is she determined, focused?

Maybe sad, the drawing a distraction

Taking time to day- dream of lives unlived

*

There’s a woman, drawing on the beach

An artist, bohemian, her own person

This, a small clutch at the life she dreamed –

After the suck of motherhood (hug-me-tights and baby talc)

Before the blur of Gran (school plays , birthday lists

and fraught daughter bail-outs) she’s got a tiny ‘window’

to be herself, the one she, that earnest student sought

Escape suburban strait-jacket

There’s a woman drawing on the beach

Wants to be taken seriously

In a world where mums are not

and house-wives ‘honour and obey

‘

Don’t get me wrong, she loves her kids

But they weren’t part of her plan

It was ideas, change, living your beliefs

not lemon-fresh cleanliness, and Good on Ya Mum

There’s a woman drawing on the beach

What is this life she could have had?

A sunlit studio in the Cross

Paris even, where her muse may live

Lovers yes, if she found the time

Good for inspiration and for warming her bed

No cooking, she eats in smoky cafes where

there’s music , philosophy, lots of red

*

There’s a woman drawing on the beach

Late sun glinting on her drifting hair

The drawing’s near to finished, enough of solitude

She stretches, listens to the evening’s call:

A drink on the verandah with her man

Time with her kids, whom she loves

Shan’s lit the fire, Bill’s cooking tea and

there are three hugs waiting