Tag Archives: Poetry

Beautiful My Mother’s Afternoon Tea…

22 Wednesday Jul 2026

Posted by in Baking, Daily Life, Food, Poetry, Reflections, Teacup

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© Joan Currie – Some of my mother’s teacups.


My Mother’s Afternoon Tea by Joan Currie

My mother served
afternoon tea
at four o’clock
every afternoon
of her life.

When I was growing up,
one neighbor or another
would show up
for some orange pekoe tea,
poured into fine English teacups.

But mostly
they came for her baking:

lemon tarts, raspberry Danish,
sherry cake, and
chocolate fudge brownies.

They never seemed shy
about taking
a second helping,
or a third,

rarely leaving enough
for our family.

When I was older,
I asked my mother
why she was never invited
to tea
at their homes.

She smiled.

“There are two kinds of people
in this world:

givers
and takers.

I want to be
a giver.”

Beautiful Girl With a Rabbit…

14 Tuesday Jul 2026

Posted by in Animals, Art, Depression, Mother, Painting, Poetry

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© Joan Currie – My painting of my mother with a rabbit in her lap. Acrylic.


Girl With a Rabbit by Joan Currie

When my mother
was a child,
she sat for an artist
with a rabbit on her lap.

The pose was very formal–
the rabbit, Düreresque;
the roses beside her,
worthy of van Aelst.

When she saw the finished portrait,
she begged her parents to buy it.

The Depression allowed
no such extravagance,
nor the Church
such vanity.

The painting was forgotten

until my mother nearing
her ninetieth birthday,
asked me to find it.

It was all she wanted.

Alas, art dealers
and auction catalogues
yielded nothing.

I could not grant
her last wish.

Years after she was gone,

I painted

a girl with a rabbit.

She looks like my mother.

I hope she can see it.

Beautiful Eau Sauvage…

08 Wednesday Jul 2026

Posted by in Aging, beautiful, Father, Poetry, Reflections

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© Joan Currie – My father’s aftershave


Eau Sauvage by Joan Currie

On a trip to Paris,
after a college year abroad,
I bought my father
a bottle of
Eau Sauvage aftershave.

I don’t know why.
Perhaps I was seduced by the
elegant Christian Dior
fragrance counter.
Or was it a friend’s urging?

He wasn’t a man
who wore cologne.

But after receiving that gift,
he wore its fresh lemon scent
for the rest of his life.

Even in hospice,
after my brother handed me
my father’s shaving kit,
a daily ritual
became a final sacrament.

I drew the razor
across his three-day stubble.

He always said
I had healing hands.

I ran tepid water
into a stainless steel bowl,
rinsed his face clean,
and dried it gently
with his well-worn terry-cloth towel.

The final act
was pouring a few drops
of Eau Sauvage
into my palms

and patting his smooth cheeks
just as he had done
a thousand times before.

I felt he knew
I was there,

in communion with him

one last time.

Amen.

Beautiful Blue Velvet Ribbons…

30 Tuesday Jun 2026

Posted by in Art, Drawing, Painting, Reflections, watercolor

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© Joan Currie – Art from my camp truck.


Blue Velvet Ribbons by Joan Currie

I came across
my old summer camp trunk
in the attic.

Inside were thick folders,
tied with sky-blue velvet ribbons.

I knew what lay within:

pencil crayon drawings
of my blond cocker spaniel,
seagulls at the beach,
ducks on the pond,
and my younger brother
in his Mountie costume.

But my favorites
were the paper doll fashions–

wedding gowns
painted in soft watercolor,
headdresses
with sunbursts and roses,
crowns and tiaras,
and Della Robbia wreaths
laden with flowers and fruit.

I made them
on rainy Sunday afternoons.

They were shown
to no one.

I wasn’t waiting
for praise or advice.

The making
was enough.

Each dress
belonged to an imagined life
I carried quietly,
as tenderly
as a child carries
a small secret.

Years later
I showed them
to my daughters.

Already,
they were better artists
than I had ever been.

They smiled,
admired them,
but declined
to add another dress
to the collection.

Perhaps,
one day,
a grandchild
will untie
the blue ribbons,

lift out the folders,

and begin again.

Not so Beautiful Bastard Cabbages…

12 Friday Jun 2026

Posted by in Flowers, Garden, Poetry, Reflections

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© Joan Currie – Daisies at sunrise.


Bastard Cabbages by Joan Currie

I pulled out the last of them
with the point of a
rock climbing pick.

The dirt was hard–
their stems thick as rhubarb.

Then it rained
for five days straight.

Bastard Cabbages returned,
invading my sweet garden,

their leaves spreading wide
like skirts of French court gowns.

But such extravagance
left little room
for daisies, snapdragons, and
sweet peas
started from seed.

I carved out a space
around the tiny flowers.
They, too, needed
light and air.

Could I keep
such a place?

Beautiful Nana…

30 Saturday May 2026

Posted by in Aging, Art, beautiful, Fashion, Flowers, Poetry, Reflections, Relationships

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© Joan Currie – My Nana’s pearls and flower power dress fabric.

My Nana – by Joan Currie

I adored my paternal grandmother,
Nana.

She looked very much
like the Queen Mother–
not only in her coloring
but in the way she dressed.

Heavy silk dresses,
a string of pearls,
a brooch pinned neatly below her neckline.

She was always prim and proper,
her expression composed,
though it softened into a lovely smile
when we sang “Happy Birthday,”
when she beat me at checkers,
and especially when she offered
a slice of lemon meringue
or apple pie,
still warm from the oven.

One day she wore a dress
my mother had sewn for her
from fabric covered
in flowers the color of
those in the flower power
advertisements.

I looked at her in wonder.

“Wild flowers!” I declared.

She giggled then–
a light, girlish sound
I had never heard before.

For an instant,
I caught sight of someone
other than my dutiful Nana:

a young woman
bright with life,
still there beneath
the silk dresses and pearls.

It was enchanting!

The following passage was in a note Nana once wrote to me:

Maiden, that read’st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For O! it is not always May!

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is Not Always May

Beautiful Simplicity 9825…

21 Thursday May 2026

Posted by in Crafts, Fashion, Mother, Poetry, Sewing

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© Joan Currie – My mother’s sewing room with her Elna sewing machine.


Simplicity 9825 by Joan Currie

I taught myself to sew
in my teenage years,
on my mother’s Elna machine
in a corner of our basement.

The sewing room was a hodgepodge
of fabric and notions
left there for the taking.

Abandoned pattern pieces
lay scattered across the big
Formica counter
beside boxes of straight pins,
thimbles, pinking shears,
measuring tapes.

Three deep drawers held
a jumble of thread spools,
button and snap cards, lace,
sequins in narrow tubes,
bits of tailor’s chalk.

The cupboards were crammed
with tweeds from the woolen mills,
velvets, tulle, corduroy,
and raw silk from her travels.

On Saturday afternoons
I slipped downstairs
with a Simplicity pattern
and my transistor radio,

and entered
that pulsing, glorious world
where a flat piece of cloth
became my prom dress.

Beautiful My Aunt’s Buttons…

17 Sunday May 2026

Posted by in Crafts, Poetry, Repurposing, Sewing

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© Joan Currie – Some of my buttons with seam ripper and scissors.


My Aunt’s Buttons by Joan Currie

My maternal aunt
was the eldest child
of Depression parents.

She could make something beautiful
out of very little.

Her father’s worn wool suits
became braided rugs.
Outgrown dresses and shirts
became pieced quilts.
Old sweaters unraveled
for mittens and toques.

When she came to visit,
she gathered up my daughters’
too-small clothes
into her lap with delight,
then sat at the kitchen table
with her small scissors
and seam ripper,
taking each garment apart
with the care of a surgeon.

When she was done,
baby jars of buttons
lined my shelves–
sorted by color and size.

There were neat folds of fabric,
bundles of lace,
zippers saved for later.

Then came sweet afternoons
spent sewing rag dolls beside her,
with little dresses to match.

But when the remnant basket
was empty,
she would begin looking
toward our closets,
imagining what else
might be cut down, remade.

Nothing was entirely safe.

That was usually when
it was time for her to go home.

Now, years later,
I find myself sitting
by the sewing machine
with a seam ripper in hand,
saving buttons from old clothes–

the old baby jars
still full on the shelf,
still being used.

Beautiful Mother’s Day Tulips…

08 Friday May 2026

Posted by in beautiful, Flowers, Love, Mother, Mother-Child, Poetry, Reflections, Relationships

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© Joan Currie – Watercolor of pale pink tulips in my mother’s Delft vase.


Mother’s Tulips by Joan Currie

My mother loved flowers–
tulips most of all.

I never asked why.
It was in her Dutch blood,
her Calvinistic sense of simplicity–
upright, unadorned.

On Mother’s Day
there were always tulips:
pale pink,
set in her Delft vase,
its blue-and-white surfaces
catching the light,
holding it quietly
beneath the stems.

I tried, sometimes,
to improve upon them–
those lavish arrangements–
variegated tulips,
blue hydrangea, white roses,
small bright globes of yellow–
but she would only smile,
as if to say:
not this.

She wanted the tulips alone.

Now, after many years
and other flowers–
peonies, lilies, anemones,
even the careful making
of paper petals–

I pass a market stall
and stop.

I bring home tulips,
pale pink,
and set them in her vase.

In the quiet of the room
they open,
and she is there.


For my mother.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers!

Beautiful Puzzling 2…

14 Tuesday Apr 2026

Posted by in Lauren DiMarco, Photography, Poetry, Reflections

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© Lauren DiMarco – My daughter, Lauren, arranging the puzzle pieces.


Puzzling 2 by Joan Currie

I brought home
a thousand-piece puzzle
from the library sale.

I sorted the pieces
by color, by edge,
and began.

A sail,
a spaniel,
a clock tower,
a child.

Then I saw
what was missing:

The sail’s belly,
the spaniel’s tail,
the clock,
the child’s upturned face.

I turned each piece
in my hand,
looking.

I felt a small anger–
that it had been given away
like this.

Still, I went on,
knowing
it would not be whole.

Each piece placed
meant fewer left.

And then–
they were there.

Not missing.
Only overlooked.

I sat with that
a long while–
how quickly
I had doubted.

How beautiful to discover the missing pieces!

Camont Puzzle by Rifle Paper Co. I just finished this one – high quality 500 pieces.

Please check out my Puzzling Post (1).