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Sport 39: 2011

The birth dressing gown

page 300

The birth dressing gown

I can’t see this towelling dressing gown
knee-length, with small embroidered flowers
without remembering it soaked in sweat
and smelling like geraniums.

The hours my daughter laboured in it
have left no trace, physically. It blows
on the clothesline, clean, sweet-smelling
a little more faded, florally

but its effect in my memory
is so close it makes a conjugation
and a declension: each tense, each case
rises from a single embedded flower

and even when it is dry and folded
sweat seems to pour from it, the labouring
the way the belt hung down
since it could not be done up.