Silk Road of my Life

I try to paint the silk road of my life,

Miyajima's red torii

and peonies for my father

how can I paint my mother's songs?

no clouds, this is to target beauty.

At least, include her brilliant laugh. 

I'd add in Abbeydale

if I could paint it, build up

the layers of petals like the

Potbank painters, overlaid in gold.

A swirl of Gobi should follow,

for those Edwardian Misses,

the real silk road explorers.

All China's glory leading to Kashgar's

Sunday market, Kansu street's jade sellers

All the way to Venice with

Burano's jewel houses

glass glinting, silver gondola prows

slide out from between palacios

and paintings everywhere

to steal your breath away.

if I take it further (as I always have)

then this silk road fascination

led to all my explorations,

Paris, Havana, Santorini, Vietnam,

Kyoto, Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal

(pause for heart stopping, stunning beauty)

and to that travelling conversation

in a long ago arts centre, 

Wowed by Brian’s talk of 

Hitchhiking to Australia. 

Turn for home to Pennine moors

endless beach of Druridge bay

or Lyminge forest bluebells

for coming down through vineyards

of a red-gold evening,

hand in hand.

LMC 2 Oct 2025

WOYWW 850 Hand of Autumn, crochet.

 Hi , I’m back for our weekly bloghop care of Sarah’s Craftshed.

Here’s my art class desk first. We’re doing the Hand of Autumn in the style of Arcimboldo, and I’m loving our first project, filling the outline of my hand with leaves, fruit, acorns and a feather. We’ll gradually cover the outline with foraged bits and pieces, painting all the items as we go  

This is one of Arcimboldo’s, an Italian who lived in the 16th century. 

I’ve loved reading ‘Georgia’ a novel about Georgia O’Keeffe by Dawn Tripp and it inspired me to paint something different: My Beaujolais. 

Sorry I didn’t get far round last week. I had to search through all my mother’s photos and memories for these photos of my aunt, Chris, whose wake is this weekend in Stoke (for which we’re making a flying visit). I confess it upset me far more than I expected, and I escaped into reading. 

This one is my aunt as a girl with my Grandad and Nan Collis. It’s typical of her so it was worth finding. 

This one has Chris as a baby with my Dad, his brother, Stan and my grandparents. 

Today I finished Miss Mathilda, who will be coming to Stoke.  

Bella loves sleeping on my lap while I’m crocheting and sends you all purrs. 

 And finally:

Looking forward to this week’s Sewing Bee final. 

I’ll be at art class on Wednesday morning so I’ll be visiting later

Hugs

Lynnecrafts xx

There May Be Chocolate 3

 There May Be Chocolate

I’m still four years old, inside,

Skipping round the corner in

My yellow Japanese dress,

With kick pleats, made by Mum.

First day at school, outraged that

Writing ‘LYNNE’ in capitals was called ‘Wrong’ when my Dad had taught me. 

I can still feel, visceral, my clenched fists. 

Learning French at seven, via

TV lessons read by ‘Lyne’.

I am still that twelve- year- old,

Amazed, in Bruges, to get free chocolates

For speaking French, regardless of mistakes.

I am still that young engineer

Ready to travel  the world,

To ride a motorbike, scuba dive and fly a plane,

Whose train set was the Channel Tunnel,

Still a writer, artist, demon crocheter.

I am the woman who’s had the greatest good fortune

To fall for the kindest man in the world,

To have loyal friends, family and godkids,

A crazy cat woman who’ll have a go

At speaking a dozen languages, because

Always, somewhere, there may be chocolate.

 

LM Collis 7 Oct 2021 updated Sept 2025

My mother’s case

 Opening my mother’s case,

A search for photos of my aunt,

Pandora spills to light, no hope,

The old fractures that 

I’ve never really healed, 

though Brian does his best.

He brings me ginger 

and lemon tea with honey

And lets me escape till

Fiction smooths the memories

Just like my summers in

The Reading tree. 

LM Collis Sept 2025

My Torii Charm

 

It was total panic today when I lost my Torii charm.

Blessed by the monks of Itsukushima shrine on Miyajima,

I’ve carried it on my phone ever since my visit six years ago.

It’s meant to keep me from harm

And I was surprised how vulnerable I felt without it.

I spent fruitless hours online, looking for a replacement.

Do the monks of Miyajima not sell blessings online?

Brian found it, eventually, he’s so good at finding lost things.

But now I think the spirit of the Torii is inside me

Has always been in fact, handed down by my father

From his visit in 1945, which is why I’ve always known

Miyajima to be such a magical place

©LM Collis Dec 2022

Giant lemon meringues

 

Today I’d rather be out with you, Mum,

Laughing over giant lemon meringues at the Ramblers’ Retreat

With you and Brian at the St Pancras champagne bar, or dining in some lovely French chateau. 

Instead I bring these crochet flowers to your grave, explain to my Dad

He died far too early for our birthday jaunts. 

LM Collis 22.10 2021

There might be chocolate

 I am still four years old, inside, 

Skipping round the corner in

My yellow Japanese dress, 

Made by my Mum. 

Going to market with my Dad. 

First day at Townsend,  lost, at seven, 

Having left my glasses at home. 

I am still the twelve- year- old,

Amazed in Bruges to get free chocolates 

For speaking French, regardless of mistakes. 

I am still that young engineer 

Ready to travel  the world,

To ride a motorbike, scuba dive and fly a plane,

Whose train set was the Channel Tunnel,

Still a writer, artist, demon crocheter.

I am the woman who’s had the greatest good fortune

To fall for the kindest man in the world,

A crazy cat woman who’ll have a go

At speaking a dozen languages, because

Always, somewhere, there might be chocolate.

LM Collis 7 Oct 2021 

Thea

 

Space curls round me,

Weighs down my chest on waking,

Not climbing up my shoulder 

Not purring nor licking my ear. 

No sandpapery, almost unbearable rasping. 

Downstairs, Brian asks the air 

if it’s put the kettle on. 

Keeps checking her bowl for lack of food. 

Such emptiness, such a fail-to-greet me

Absence of our Thea, absence of cat. 

LM Collis 23.6.2021

Don’t wear black for my funeral

Don’t wear black for my funeral
Just come as you are
Or wear that Viet dragon tie
You could see from afar

Don’t come sad to my funeral 
I’m glad you’re my friend
It’s for remembering the good times
Not just for the end

Wear bright clothes at my funeral
For the good times we shared
Don’t cry at my funeral
I’ll still know you cared. 

LM Collis 16 June 2021

Written as I was putting clothes away

For Afghanistan

Since the 1830s ‘Disaster in Afghanistan’
We have been losing Afghan wars. 
 Not just some red- uniformed, 
Victorian empire, thinly translated 
To modern day, whose upper lip barely quivers
At yet another campaign in the meaningless sand
Not even the millions of uncounted Afghan casualties,
But whole civilisations pounded from dust to finer dust.
 
A land of mages, poets and sages,
Of Zoroaster’s birth, his fire temples, 
Ancient Bactria, where Alexander the Great
married Roxanne, the local princess.

Land of Rumi of the whirling dervishes

Of tragic poet Rabia Balkhi, who signed 

Her martyrdom in her own life’s blood

On the wind you may hear her songs.

 

Crossroads of the Silk Road,

Xuanzang’s pilgrimage passed through here, 

as he carried Buddhism to China on his back.

Marco Polo called Bactria a splendid city

And, of course,  the British weren’t the first.

The whirlwind that was  Genghis Khan

First razed then occupied the land. 

As did Timur, the Mughal empire, all.

 

The papers today claim Britain has 

‘Wasted 20 years’ on this futile war. 

And yet it is so much more. In Greece, 

In Rome or Canterbury, you can see our history 

As Afghanistan is bombed to dust once more

It is as if those Victorian moustaches were still

Erasing all that culture, all that glory, till only 

The women’s nightmare of the Taliban 

And the proud beaked stance of the Pashtun still remains. 

 

L M Collis 16.4.2021

My first day at school

10 April 1961

Sixty years ago today,

My first day at school and the teacher asked

“Who can write your name?”

Up shot my hand. I can remember my ponytail swinging as I strode to the front. (Though it was already escaping from its ribbon.)

I wrote my name “LYNNE” in chalk on the board. 

The Y was wobbly but it looked alright. 

And the teacher turned and said

“That is WRONG. You don’t write it all in capitals.”

I can still taste the rage, even now. 

“That’s not wrong. My Daddy taught me. My Daddy’s not wrong” I shouted, and stomped back to my seat, between Rob and Susan at the back,

Already, before I was even five, I learned rebellion. 

LM Collis 6.4.21

When we get out of this

 

When we get out of this

I’m going to run and hug you all,

Sit and chat over a glass of wine,

Whisper confidences, hoot with laughter,

Gossip over how we were in lockdown.

 

When we get out of this,

I’ll come to hear your brass band play

Stand in the crowd and shout for Wales

Take countryside walks at the cusp of evening

And along your harbour wall.

 

When we get out of this

We’ll go shopping, visit Carmarthen market,

little Llandeilo woolshops,

Drink elbow to elbow in the Ginhaus

As we celebrate getting through.

 

When we get out of this, I dream

Of a grand adventure for us all,

A wild, sunny holiday, where Rhys

Can make us laugh with story telling

And we can wonder, safely, at the world.

LM Collis 11.03.2021

Brian’s exotic wife

It was one of those late night, rambling conversations we have

Over a bottle of wine, and old music videos

When Brian remembered how some train modelling friend had referred to me as 

“Brian’s exotic wife”. 

It took a long time for me to stop laughing 

And then he told me he’d replied,

“I’m proud of her”. 

Now that brings tears of a different kind. 

Maybe it was when I was working in Paris. 

I was referred to as his French wife once, after all. 

But exotic? “From a distant foreign country”? No. I’m from the Potteries. 

“Attractive or striking because colourful or out of the ordinary”? Who knows.

I don’t suppose they know many women engineers who get to live in Paris. 

And I’ve always liked to be colourful at least. 

But I’ll remember this Friday night for something I’ve always striven for above all. 

To know always Brian is proud of me. 

LMC 27.2.21

My Hoi An pot

 

My Hoi An pot

This little pot from the Hoi An hoard was made over half a millennium ago, 

From a ship that sank around 1480

In a place so stormy it’s called the Dragon sea. 

Already beneath the waves when Henry VII won his throne,

Sleeping on the sea bed through all Henry VIII’s travails

When Elizabeth’s ships overcame the Armada,

Through Stuarts, revolution and restoration, German Georges,

When Victoria’s empire swept the world, this little pot was just swept by sea currents, settling sand.

Through Ming dynasties, empires, China’s revolution, when wars raged above, it lay quietly in its shipwreck in the South China Sea. 

And now this modest capsule of history 

Lies in my hand, resonating 

With all that happened overhead. 

LMC 25.12.2020

Kashgar

Kashgar, Kashgar, for how many years have you been 

My ultimate destination? Now you’re published 

On the tourist lists of “last chance to see” 

As China swings its wrecking ball 

Through your ancient Turkic homes 

That don’t fit stamp of the Han. 

Crumbling old mud and tiled lanes 

Of granddad, auntie craft works. 

Why are the horseshoe makers closed? 

Look where the Uighurs’ Nomad horse fairs are no more. 

Free people tied to Urumqi factories or prisons 

They don’t fit the stamp of the Han 

What point is there now 

In the fabled Sunday market of Kashgar? 

There is no value when

A concrete travesty has trampled 

This glorious meeting of the silk roads 

There is no sense in this westward 

Wrecking march of the Han

LM Collis 2009

Today, Margate cemetery

H

E

A

Today, under a wide, white Thanet sky,   we went to Margate cemetery 

I wanted to tell my Dad that John Peach had died. 

He never wanted his sister to marry John

And yet they stayed together for 60 years. 

It’s not as though I can send my Dad a text 

To: George1925@bonesunderground.com

Subject: your brother-on-law has died. 

I wouldn’t do that even if he were alive.

And so I went and cleaned their grave

Told them our news: John, the funeral, the pandemic 

they couldn’t understand, And took them flowers,

Glad that my guerrilla plaque to my Mother had not been taken away.  

The flatness of Thanet affronted me anew. 

We spent our lives going back and forth over the Peak District,

And I wondered what really made him relocate us there. 

There was always the story of how he’d liked the area 

from when stationed in Deal

But there are so many different stories that I can no longer 

believe the simple one I was told. They feel dirty, like lies. 

I know that if I asked someone else

It would be a totally different point of view. 

But we are all multiple beings, reflecting different facets for the moon, the light  

And so all I can do is accept I know a truth, just the one potential one

Among the many  

LMCollis 19.9.20

Dancing on the table

Today I laid wreaths for both of you

But couldn’t feel your presence

Not like at Howard’s funeral 

Where you unexpectedly held my hand. 

Then tonight I saw an restaurant on TV.

It wasn’t far south of Derby

And I thought I could take you there

But then realised it’s too late.

So I remember Hatton Hall, Chatsworth, 

How you loved the South bank. 

The great afternoon tea and awful 

Christmas at Crewe hall. 

Birthdays at the Ramblers 

you phoning me on New Year’s Day 

To say you’d been dancing on the table

In the Red Cow on New Year’s Eve. 

LM Collis Dec 2019

Best friends are the sisters you choose

Best friends are the sisters you choose 
Says the badge, all over Facebook today.
Today I’m missing you all so much
Would love a natter over a cuppa, cosy crafting.

Get better, sort out my next steps
Make time for such meetings
Stop this work/sick cycle
And breathe......

 LMC 3 Oct 2019

I‘m a potter too

Broadcasters use my city as a Brexiteer example, 

But I’m also from Stoke-on-Trent

My father, mother, grandmothers worked in potbanks 

As a child I sat on the knees of decorators as they painted 

gorgeous detailed decoration by hand onto bone china, 

Learned to lithograph rosebuds onto little ashtrays for my father’s market stall 

Grandfathers and uncles worked down pits, 

and my uncle died holding up the roof for others to get out from a fall.

Stoke and its minerals are in my blood too. 

And yet my father had revelled in his wartime travel

I grew up writing poems on travelling,

Loving everything Japanese and adoring Miyajima

Just as he had done. Aged 7, my Bucknall junior school

Used a TV programme to teach us French.

All about “Lyne” like me, with short dark hair and glasses.

So the class took the piss and I learned French, 

then it was always easy for me.

I learned electronics in a Hanley Skillcentre

Became an engineer; started in television. 

My husband Brian had made friends in France

Picking grapes in Beaujolais, now our family.

Beaujolais in my blood now as well as china clay.

I moved to the Channel Tunnel when ITV was sold off

As they needed bilingual control engineers. 

Still, as a woman, a trade unionist in a man’s world.

I started a railway engineering career that 

Has has lasted now 28 years, with four glorious years

Working in Paris for High Speed 1.  The first member

Of our family to gain an MSc degree.a Chartered Engineer.

Of course I’m not a Brexiteer.  I’ve seen the benefits 

We gain from the EU. I have family in France, we love

The food and wine of Italy, too.

I’ve been to Miyajima and loved it to bits.
But this came from my blood, my father 
who embraced the travel of WW2 Marines. 

It comes from me, as part of Stoke-on-Trent, a potter.

LM Collis 25Sept2019