Darning
Memories
gather, opening
shadows—deep
raw lost lines
like threads of light unraveled–
heart silent, naked.
Sarah Connor at dVerse asked us to consider love tokens, and featured photos of tokens left by mothers at the London Foundling Hospital in the 1700s. Of course the use of textiles appealed to me, but the heartbreak of having to leave your child in the hands of others, with only a glimmer of hope that someday you would be reunited, will not easily fade from my thoughts.
35 responses to “Darning”
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 | boundlessblessingsbl… on March 2021 |
 | Claudia McGill on March 2021 |
 | D. Wallace Peach on March 2021 |
 | Colleen M. Chesebro on March 2021 |
 | memadtwo on March 2021 |
Very well done — the fretful title cannot quite close the gaps opened in the poem. And that’s the rub, isn’t it …
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It is. Those gaps will never be mended. Thanks Brendan.
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Those tokens and what they symbolize are heartbreaking.
These lines: “raw lost lines
like threads of light unraveled–
heart silent, naked”
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Thanks Merril. I will be thinking about them for a long time.
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Yes, I will be, too.
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This is such a powerful recognition of pain. I love the way you wove the textiles into your words. Thank you for sharing this.
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Thanks Sarah. Those tokens will find echos elsewhere I’m sure.
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Your raw and tender poem unravels me to tears…
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Thanks Lynn. It’s a heartbreaking story.
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Darning itself is something I associate with poverty. It’s what grandparents used to do, and mothers, and I before I discovered charity shops for clothes and learned that children’s clothes are not worth spending much grief over—they don’t. I imagine those poor girls and women darning and darning, trying to keep some semblance of respectability though they were too poor to have kept their babies. Tragic.
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Thanks Jane. Yes, I remember my mother’s mother repairing things until there was nothing left to repair. Even after they escaped the worst of it, poverty was always a companion ready to reassert itself. And to lose your child–I can’t imagine it.
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I think a lot of those girls thought they didn’t deserve to keep their baby, that they had been wicked and the child would be better brought up by someone else. The guilt society inculcated in women beggars belief.
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It still continues, sadly.
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It’s an inferiority complex on a massive scale.
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I read an article some ago about the London Foundling Hospital. It did bring me to tears. Your representation of that time in history is very moving.
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Thanks Sharon. I’m grateful to Sarah for showing us some of the tokens and giving us some background to them–we should all be aware of this story.
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Very moving, Kerfe.
Sometimes there is no mending, only concealing.
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Thanks Ken. Sadly, yes.
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Very nice
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The words are powerful and go very well with the art!
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Thanks Lynn!
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I think the saddest thing is all those little mementos, and I imagine that they represent mostly the children never claimed… I wonder what happened to most of them…
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The sorrow does seem to flow out of the cards. Life is very difficult for those without resources, and I can’t imagine they were given much when they aged out of the hospital (much like our foster care system today, sadly).
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Deep raw lost lines…I feel this
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Thanks Mary. The tokens are full of sorrow.
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I specially like this part, very moving:
like threads of light unraveled–
heart silent, naked.
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Thanks Grace.
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oh Kerfe…….. such poignant sorrow………..
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It is. Unimaginable.
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I like the description of unraveling threads of light.
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Thanks Frank. Light can be very threadlike at times.
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threads of light unraveled This whole topic just steal my heart – and that is a great description.
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Thanks Margaret–it is indeed a heartbreaking story.
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There’s colors and texture in this; lots to feel.
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Those tokens definitely aroused my feelings.
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