Mother: The Art of You

My mother has an eye for beautiful things:

the cut of a coat, the plush of a sofa, the brilliance of Turner's Sunrise.

She knows too, that beauty is no small thing,

understanding that a room, a dress,

a table laid for six can alter the destiny of a day.

She has always known the art of things:

what to keep, what to move, what needs a little more colour,

what needs more salt, more spice, more heat, more flare,

where the flowers should sit in the sunlight.

At her table, nobody is merely fed, no -

there are sauces made from saffron, and pomegranate,

second helpings pressed upon the unwilling,

always enough food for the people who came

(and enough for the people I forgot to mention I invited)

A dinner party in her hands, becomes a glorious republic

in which everyone is welcomed and nobody leaves merely fed,

they leave richer for having laughed and eaten so well.

Beyond the parties, the feasts, the razzle-dazzle of her dresses,

she is magnificent at the business of living.

It's all Ronnie Scott’s rampages and romps around the Tate,

late nights spilling through Soho, neck-deep in Negronis,

the music catching hold of her in a bar, in the garden,

up on the tables, wherever the night takes her,

her gloriously debauched stories

growing more outrageous with every telling,

the laughter swelling, and gathering,

the hours unravelling, and that particular

pleasure of being overdressed for no reason at all.

But let someone threaten what she loves

and see how quickly the velvet hardens.

There is a lioness in her, a gold-eyed, unblinking thing

rising from the heart and chomping at the bit.

So many times she has stood between me and the world

without asking whether she is strong enough to do so.

Simply she stands there and somehow the world must reckon with it.

For all that she gives - and she gives freely from the deep well of herself,

I wonder sometimes if she knows how much of her remains

in what she leaves behind; in the recipes I can't reproduce,

in the instinct for fun, in the sharp word that saves me a worse hurt,

and in the door that has always been held open for me,

long after the occasion for opening it has passed.

Perhaps this is it's own kind of art:

not simply to recognise what is beautiful,

but to make beauty and fun live among people.

To take the raw ingredients of a life -

its hungers, its griefs, its unruly guests -

and turn them, through her fire and her grit,

into something worth living for.

Mother, you have made a world of your own,

rich with excellent taste, sprawling ambition,

and a certain well-founded intolerance for nonsense,

but more than this, you have for me,

created a world in which "woman" means

strength, warmth, generosity, ambition, tenacity

wilderness, ferocity, humour and unapologetic joy.

So today, let someone else pour the wine,

let someone else bring the flowers,

let the meal arrive without your supervision,

for you have spent a lifetime making the world better to live in,

so for once let the world make a little fuss of you.