Red Shoes

Here the road goes nowhere and everywhere
But you – you stopped here
Thirty years before in new red shoes
Mini skirted, slenderly blond
Staring out into the lens
Dad’s arms around you
Smiling through ghost glass

Obscured by a battery of tasks
First you fought; then lost
Your smooth face and hands
Grew listless in smocks
Creased up and worn you fade into the backs
Of scrubbed cupboards
Are ironed flat; your red shoes
Turned blue under a cosmos of feet

Here everything except something
Kept you from everything
The house; the kids; the diligent bills
In tins; you are lost in a silent no-where
Yet your image remains
Dreamily gazing whilst the tides draw
towards you licking red shoes