Bath Night

White-washed brick flakes sharp shards like soap. Furrowed.
A brackish stain all that remains of the nail
where it hung through three-day weeks. Stoppages.
Saturdays, its galvanised bulk, taut with kettle hot suds
sloughed off both antique dust of anthracite
and claggy mud from playground knees.
Two bars to take the chill off.
Afterwards rubbed gas dry and
cocoa-warmed we crept up creaking stairs
where wound with mildewed merle
we clutched throat-scorching water bottles.
The clock’s grasshopper song, dulled urban sleep,
luminous limbs marking time
till Sunday dawn, fit for church or church-house we awoke.
Later, an idea of avocado took its place
sprouting in spare bedroom. We ceased to sleep at Granddad’s.
The tin bath remained one summer more, a paddling pool
to cool mid-decade kids, midst shrieks and splashes.
Come Autumn it merged like mundane memories, unmarked
to tip or Rag and Bone Man.
Modernised white now stands where once pear fruited,
cool and clinical. A nurse soaps shades of Caerau coal from Granddad’s back
tentative in lozenge bed.
Turned every hour.