Dilys Rose (1954–) is an accomplished poet, novelist, and artist and a friend of mine. We have known each other since we were students together in Edinburgh in the early 70s. I’ve watched with pleasure, satisfaction, and even pride as her career has developed and read many of her books. She has recently produced a series of pictures and poems combined, and she kindly offered me one. I chose the “Yellow Polka Dot Dress” because of both the picture and the poem. It’s a witty poem that captures through the dress the female progression from maiden to mother to crone. Dilys has two daughters and two young grandchildren, one a girl who will inherit the dress. I knew Dilys when wearing the dress “she sashayed forth from cheap hotels, turned heads – she says! –  in London, Paris, Venice.” (The “she says!” is very Dilys.) Now she couldn’t get into the dress just as I couldn’t get into my loons, if I still had them. You should look at Dilys’s website, and you might be tempted to buy one of her picture/poems. https://dilysrose.com/

Yellow Polka Dot Dress

When their measurements were perfect,

wriggling in turn into its sharply-tailored curves

the daughters shrieked:  How the hell could Mum –

who bought it in a thrift shop a million years ago  –

have ever got into such a slinky thing?

How could she ever have been skinnier than them,

with a waist she could cinch between her fingertips?

In the style of downtown Louisiana, circa 1955 –

Was that when Mum and Retro were born? –

the dress and its itsy bitsy bolero shrug

has been around longer than they have:

souvenir from the old dear’s youth; remnant

from the days she sashayed forth from cheap hotels,

turned heads – she says! –  in London, Paris, Venice.

When it fitted like a snakeskin, the daughters

backpacked it to Delhi, Kandy, Bangkok

but soon it defied them, defeated their diet plans.

Crushed, torn,  straining at the seams, it began

to smell  of cumin, dope, drains. They shucked it off.

Mended and mothballed, snug in Mum’s wardrobe,

the yellow polka dot dress awaits the granddaughters.