It isn’t simply economy
that makes your bathwater such a joy
but perhaps that I am normally
an amateur of the shower.
I find it takes the weight off me
and ripples me into strange and interesting shapes.
Sometimes a brunette sea anemone surfaces
between my pale old-chap breasts
and the islands of my knees.
My shipwrecked toes
rise like a warning
to the ghosts
of our children’s floating bath-toys.
I love to pull out the plug and feel
myself slowly flattened to the thickness
of a non-slip mat
which in our case we have not got.