Trousers

When my grandfather worked on the railway,
he was issued with two pairs of serge trousers.
He wore them all day, and every night,
he placed them between the bed frame and the mattress,
so the weight of his and my grandma’s sleeping bodies
pressed them into flatness.

All those dreams, all that tossing and turning,
and the trousers lying there, spending the night getting smarter.
Imagine, say, the night my grandparents
made my father – how they might have slipped
from bed the next morning, my grandmother
humming, heading towards the kitchen, my grandfather
pulling from under the mattress, a pair of serge trousers –
good as new, ready for anything.