Poems
New School
Time, like the Mafia, leaves few witnesses;
maybe the fire hydrant with the missing plate,
or the silent row of bollards watched it happen,
while the bungalow winced and hid
the wideness of its eyes.
We met on the Town Hall stage, gladiators
of opposing teams in the Road Safety Quiz;
your mother sat side by side with mine,
brimming that we’d be pupils in the next school,
that we might be friends.
When I rolled up in August, checked the lists,
there you were in print in class 1A, neatly typed
by a school which didn’t know
about the cul-de-sac, reversing bus, the lack
of vision at the back.
First published in The Bridport Prize Anthology, 2022