by Vicki Feaver

I used to iron everything:
my iron flying over sheets and towels
like a sledge chased by wolves over snow;

the flex twisting and crinking
until the sheath frayed, exposing
wires like nerves. I stood like a horse

with a smoking hoof,
inviting anyone who dared
to lie on my silver padded board,

to be pressed to the thinness
of dolls cut from paper.
I'd have commandeered a crane

if I could, got the welders at Jarrow
to heat me an iron the size of a tug
to flatten the house.

Then for years I ironed nothing.
I put the iron in a high cupboard.
I converted to crumpledness.

And now I iron again: shaking
dark spots of water onto wrinkled
silk, nosing into sleeves, round

buttons, breathing the sweet heated smell
hot metal draws from newly-washed
cloth, until my blouse dries

to a shining, creaseless blue,
an airy shape with room to push
my arms, breasts, lungs, heart into.

© Vicki Feaver. Published in The Handless Maiden (Cape 1994)

'Ironing' was inspired by ''The Flower', a poem by the 17th century metaphysical poet George Herbert. He sees the flower's death in winter
and rebirth in the spring as a metaphor for his recovery from a kind of spiritual death - 'And now in age I bud again, I once more feel and dew and rain and relish versing'. I love this poem and wrote my own recovery poem as a response to it using my relationship to ironing. I remember ironing the blouse and describing in my notebook the sensations I felt. Two more things in the poem came out of my experience - I used to make rows of cut-out paper dolls with my children and I lived in Newcastle and once went to see a ship launched at Jarrow.