SHAMPOO SHEEN AND THE CURSE OF OBSCURED MEMORIES

When your head smells of

Sunkissed Raspberry or Joy and Jasmine,

it masks the days of sea swimming –

wild jumps from Liscannor’s rocks.

I can’t catch the scent of clean straw

you tell me filled the room

when our babies were born,

making me think

I might have been

the blessed Virgin after all.

It hides warm legs tangled together on cold nights.

There is no musty depth to wrap itself around

my dad, your mum, your dad

and the grown-up choosing of caskets,

the reading of poems and the polite heavy nods

of strangers’ hanging heads.

Gone is the trace of ordinary day-after-days

of lighting fires, playing games:

of planting seeds in spring that fail to thrive

and then planting them again.