Here in this shower,
in this Edwardian house
that she’d call posh
I press slivers of soap
into one cake
The keen recycler
in these throwaway days,
thinking not to save pennies
I know I wouldn’t miss
but to make something last.
And I see her beside her Belfast basin
in that dockland terrace and she’s grumbling
and scrubbing my dirty eight-year-old knees,
ignoring my pleas that this is from communion
at the school’s “first Friday” Mass.
And she is unimpressed
saying she knows alter-dust,
scrubbing ever harder
with that rainbow
soap that lasts for ever.
And there’s something in this soap,
or in my method,
that will not let the pieces stick.