My grandmother taught me to knit

Even though she could hardly knit
herself, I can’t, I’d say. Her reply always the same. 
There is no such word as can’t.

She taught me to cast on and cast off.
I knitted a web of red and pink
barely resembling a scarf,
full of dropped stitches and holes.

Grandmother told me 
she worked in a bomb factory
and was terrified – one mistake and boom!

Grandmother, a housekeeper
for the local priest, until she married
my grandfather a miner.
Everyone in Esh Winning, a miner.

Sometimes I think I should
teach my daughter to knit
or crochet, but the sewing kits
are gathering dust, the knitting
needles still in the box.

The old black Singer on the
mantlepiece, gold leaf songbird
and wild rose fading, along
with my grandmother’s name,
scratched into its dirt.  

Rachel Burns


First published in The Fig Tree - Women's Poetry Special Issue 2