Baby Grow Drying for the Last Time

Redundant now, like coal.
Romantic now, like colliery bands.
Tunes of victory,
when in reality we screamed and
sobbed through ashen nights.

Which goes where? We’d once asked,
soldiering over virgin stations,
new mats for new lives.
Now nimbly I pop and stretch and cloak,
without thought for years.

Pink bruise, faded keepsake,
to hold in rusted fingers and sniff.
Remembering just
tiny, dancing limbs, speechless joy, when
she was ours, just ours.