Buttons are like treasures aren’t they? For example, the buttons you find at the bottom of your mother’s sewing drawer, cut from some worn-out piece of clothing and, waste not want not, kept for some future use.

fingers
in the button collection
a cool smoothness

shuffling through
Mum’s button collection
there’s my old green coat

Perhaps this a time-specific memory, uncommon these days? People don’t wear out clothes any more, and mothers often have nothing more in their sewing kits than a needle, thread, safety pins, and scissors. The other day my daughter said to me, ‘We don’t have Sunday-best clothes any more. We only have good clothes.’ True as it is, it could be a metaphor for the ecological problems of the planet.

between arthritic fingers
the awkwardness
of a button

on the child’s palm
the opalescent sea-scape
of a button

………………………….

‘The button on the top of a…