The Fur Coats Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Movie stars swanked in them
Women swooned for them
Fur coats, warm and luxurious

Mother wore mink,
Mink stole, mink coat,
Mink muff, mink hat
She was a cold woman

Cavemen loved furs
Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis

Indigenous people like its insulation
The Inuit folk of the Arctic,
Tribes in Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia,
Scandinavia, Japan,
Have been known to step out in it.
It's traditional Samifootwear

In church on a Sunday
Our kirk pews were studded with fox furs
Sharp beady eyes, piercing the godly and righteous
In the Swinging Sixties,
Coney fur swished round the thighs of the fashionista

In 1914 the Shah of Persia
Wore a hat of Astrakhan when his crown proved to be too heavy,
A president's wife paid $6,000 for a coat of the same

The Victorians loved it, its heavy, glossy, ornate surface
Countess de Castiglione, a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III
Posed for photos in a fitted coat topped in the fur

But I loved my grandmother's slinky Astrakhan
Better than any bear or plastic doll
As a child I wore it like a second skin
Not knowing it was the tight curled fleece
Of a new-born lamb, skinned in Central Asia.

I knew nothing about its origin, its cost
Only, that it smelt of grandmother, of loving kindness