I curled my fists,
Tried not to think of friendship,
Or whispered secrets,
Or games for two players.
But the empty seat beside me
Shimmered with need
And my loneliness dragged her like a magnet.
As she sat down
I caught the musty smell of old forests,
Noticed the threads that dangled
At her thin wrists,
The purple stitches that circled
Her swan’s neck.
Yet I loved her quietness,
The way she held her pencil
Like a feather,
The swooping curves of her name,
The dreaminess of her cold eyes.
At night, I still wonder
Where she sleeps,
If she sleeps,
And what Miss Moon will say
To her tattered parents
On Open Day.
Clare Bevan
Mrs Mackenzie
Mrs Mackenzie’s quite stern.
She says, ‘You’re not here to have fun,
You’re here to learn,’
When I mess about in class.
And in the corridor, if I run
When she’s passing by, she shouts
‘Slow down! You’re not in a race!’
Or ‘More haste, less speed!’ –
Whatever that means.
I never used to like Mrs Mackenzie much.
But the other day
When my dog died
And she saw me crying
She said ‘Dogs are such good friends,
Aren’t they?’
And she let me stay
In the classroom with her at breaktime
When all the other children went outside
To play.
Mrs Mackenzie’s OK.
Gillian Floyd
The Day After
I went to school
the day after Dad died.
Teacher knew all about it.
She put a hand on my shoulder
and sighed.
In class things seemed much the same
although I was strangely subdued.
Breaktime was the same too,
and at lunchtime the usual crew
played up the dinner supervisors.
Fraggle was downright rude.
I joined in the football game
but volunteered to go in goal.
That meant I was left almost alone,
could think things over on my own.
For once I let the others shout
and race and roll.
First thing that afternoon,
everyone in his and her place
for silent reading,
I suddenly felt hot tears streaming
down my face.
Salty tears splashed down
and soaked into my book’s page.
Sobs heaved in my chest.
Teacher peered over her half specs
and said quietly, ‘Ben, come here.’
I stood at her desk crying. At my age!
I felt like an idiot, a clown.
‘Don’t feel ashamed,’ teacher said.
‘It’s only right to weep.
Here, have these tissues to keep.’
I dabbed my eyes, then looked around.
Bowed into books, every head.
‘Have a cold drink.
Go with James. He’ll understand.’
In the boys’ cloaks I drank deeply
then slowly wiped my mouth
on the back of my hand.
Sheepishly I said, ‘My dad died.’
‘I know,’ said James.
‘We’d best get back to class. Come on.’
Walking down the corridor I thought of Dad . . . gone.
In class no one sniggered,
they were busy getting changed for games.
No one noticed I’d cried.
All day I felt sad, sad.
After school I reached my street,
clutching the tissues, dragging my feet.
Mum was there in our house
but no Dad,
no Dad.
Squirrels and Motorbikes
Today we went out of school
Down the lane
Into the spinney
To watch squirrels
We saw lots of grey squirrels
Scuttling through the trees
Searching for nuts on the ground
Some as still as statues
We all took notes
Made sketches
And asked questions
Back in school
We drew our squirrels
Some sitting like
Silver grey coffee-pots
While others paddled acorns
Into the soft green grass
Some still listening with their tufty ears
Others with their feather-duster tails waving
Everyone drew a squirrel picture – except
George, who drew a motorbike
But then, he always does.
David Whitehead
The Fairy School under the Loch
(Sgoil a’Morghain, Barra, The Hebrides)
The wind sings its gusty song.
The bell rings its rusty ring.
The underwater fairy children
dive and swim through school gates.
They do not get wet.
The waves flick their flashing spray.
A school of fish wriggles its scaly way.
The underwater fairy children
learn their liquidy lessons.
Their reading books are always dry.
The seals straighten in a stretchy mass.
Teresa the Teacher flits and floats from class to class.
The underwater fairy children
count, play, sing and recite,
their clothes not in the least bit damp.
The rocks creak in their cracking skin.
A fairy boat drifts into a loch of time.
The underwater fairy children
lived, learned and left this life –
their salty stories now dry as their cracked wings.
John Rice
We Lost Our Teacher to the Sea
We’ve been at the seaside all day
collecting shells, drawing the view
doing science in the rockpools.
Our teacher went to find the sea’s edge,
and stayed there, he’s sitting on a rock
he won’t come back.
His glasses are frosted over with salt
his beard has knotted into seaweed
his black suit is covered in limpets.
He’s staring into the wild water
singing to the waves
sharing a joke with the herring gulls.
We sent out the coastguard
the lifeboat and the orange helicopter
he told them all to go away.
We’re getting on the bus with our sticks of rock
our presents for Mum
and our jotters and pencils.
He’s still out there as we leave
arms outstretched to the pale blue sky
the tide racing towards him.
His slippery fishtail flaps
with a flick and a shimmer he’s gone
back to the sea forever.
David Harmer
Ms Fleur
Though she doesn’t know it,
Our teacher is a mermaid.
We built her from Skegness sand,
Me and Emily,
Sculpted a swishing tail,
Curved scales with the edge of our hands,
And arranged her driftwood hair in a spiky halo.
All day we piled the sand and patted her.
Though she didn’t see it,
We wrote her name, Ms Fleur,
In our biggest le
tters,
Me and Emily,
Next to her blue shell belly button,
And her squidgy seaweed earrings
That popped between our fingers.
All day we piled the sand and patted her.
Though she didn’t hear it,
We sang a mermaid song,
And screeched like seagulls,
Me and Emily,
As we fixed her fins,
And tiny pebble eyes,
Saw crabs scuttle across her shingle necklace.
All day we piled the sand and patted her.
Until finally the sea lapped at her fins,
Her driftwood hair, her seaweed earrings,
And she swished her fish tail,
High into the foam,
Calling,
‘Katie, Emily,
It’s time to go,
It’s time for home,
It’s time to say goodbye you know!’
Mary Green
Changed
For months he taught us, stiff-faced.
His old tweed jacket closely buttoned up,
his gestures careful and deliberate.
We didn’t understand what he was teaching us.
It was as if a veil, a gauzy bandage, got between
what he was showing us and what we thought we saw.
He had the air of a gardener, fussily protective
of young seedlings, but we couldn’t tell
if he was hiding something or we simply couldn’t see it.
At first we noticed there were often scraps of leaves
on the floor where he had stood. Later, thin wisps
of thread like spider’s web fell from his jacket.
Finally we grew to understand the work. And on that day
he opened his jacket, which to our surprise
seemed lined with patterned fabric of many shimmering hues.
Then he smiled and sighed. And with this movement
the lining rippled and instantly the room was filled
with a flickering storm of swirling butterflies.
Dave Calder
Teacher
When you teach me,
your hands bless the air
where chalk dust sparkles.
And when you talk,
the six wives of Henry VIII
stand in the room like bridesmaids,
or the Nile drifts past the classroom window,
the Pyramids baking like giant cakes
on the playing fields.
You teach with your voice,
so a tiger prowls from a poem
and pads between desks, black and gold
in the shadow and sunlight,
or the golden apples of the sun drop
from a branch in my mind’s eye.
I bow my head again
to this tattered, doodled book
and learn what love is.
Carol Ann Duffy
St Judas Welcomes Author Philip Arder
Welcome to St Judas.
Because of a mix-up in timetabling
Miss Horace who was supposed to be looking after you today
has had to go on a factory field-trip
with gifted and talented and the two classes
of students who’ve actually read your book.
We’ve had to put you with a younger group
who, like me I must confess, have never heard of you,
but we did look you up on Wikipedia
and see that you like cats.
Perhaps you could tell a story with lots of actions
and they could pretend to be their favourite animals?
There’s a note here from Miss H saying that
we are unable to buy any of your books for the library
because we’ve spent the budget for this school term.
The children won’t be able
to purchase any of your books either,
following a change of rules recently agreed by the PTA.
We have arranged, however, for you to sign
lots of scraps of paper
of ever-diminishing
sizes.
And for you to give two extra talks,
seeing as how you’re here.
A photographer from the local paper
has a small window in his busy schedule
so can only come halfway through your first event.
At this stage, we will have to stop proceedings
and remove from shot those children whose parents
have not given consent for them to be photographed.
It shouldn’t take long.
And I should warn you that
there are certain children
unsuitable for audience participation.
We found that out the hard way.
I’m going to have to leave you here
in the staffroom for a while
while I find an alternative venue.
Mock exams in the main hall
mean that you’ll probably have to give your
little talks in the dining room.
I’ll ask the kitchen staff to keep the noise
of table-laying
to a minimum.
I’m afraid I’ll have to nip out part-way through
your first event
to sort out a health and safety issue
but Mrs Lomax will be there throughout,
though she does have to finish
a pile of marking.
Mr Goody, our PE teacher, will be just down the corridor
and has promised to keep an ear out for the kids
if they get restless.
At that age, they’re easily bored.
I’m sorry if things seem a little disorganized
but you must be used to it.
I imagine the big names don’t do school visits,
do they?
Have you ever met Philip Pullman,
by the way?
His books are amazing.
Ah, there goes the bell.
Help yourself to coffee.
The mugs are in the sink . . .
Philip Ardagh
BIRTH AND DEATH
You’re
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools’ Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Sylvia Plath
Morning Song
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your ha
ndful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Sylvia Plath
Drury Goodbyes
What with getting in the way of the packing
and not being allowed to go to
the big event, Great-granny’s funeral,
we found something silly to do, and did it:
we sat the new dolls on the potty
after we’d done wees in it ourselves.
Next day we were going away in a boat
so big that you could stand up in it,
they said, and it wouldn’t tip over.
There was no time to dry the soggy dolls;
they were left behind – all but my Margaret,
who wouldn’t bend enough to dunk her bottom.
Fleur Adcock
Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith
Song
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain: