Washing my mother’s hair

She’s bird-thin,

fragile as her brittle smile,

her teeth suddenly too big for her mouth

lips thinned, clumsy with Vaseline

to stop the cracks showing.

Only last summer she broke

the world record in Running For The Bus

carrier bags thumping at her varicose legs

then fanned herself with the Radio Times

all the fifteen stops home.

Now her spine is hooked

into a question mark

from which her head tries to look up.

She doesn’t have to bend at all to get her hair

into the wash-basin.

For the first time in my life,

and hers,I pour the warm water,

the baby shampoo, the best conditioner I could buy,

rub the blushing whiteness of her scalp gently

while she holds her flannel

clamped to her eyes like she taught me to.

And she says Oh that’s lovely. Just what I need.

That’s right, give it a good rub. Oh that’s just lovely.

Sure and I’ll be a new woman.

And I rub and chat quietly

and joke with her in a put-on voice:

Has Madam done her numbers for the lottery yet?

and Will it be Torremolinos again this year, Madam?

and the other things that mind-numbed hairdressers

say to their ladies.

And nothing at all

about how much

I love her.

This poem appeared in The Thousand Natural Shocks by Char March, published by Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2011.

10.09.2026

komentarze