Consider the beauty of old teachers
their especial features
a window in a door
to their soul.
Miss English Lit Morgan had gentle slender feet
at the end of dolly-peg legs,
shapelessly sweet.
Miss Hist Wayland's teeth
were crooked as twigs,
and therefore real.
Miss Geographic Legget had a back like a wooden chair
and ice-grey hair
flying unpinned and streaming.
How do these things de-construct as meaning?
Morgan le Fay at the end of the day like a fed cat grooming
Italian pumps mahogany lace-ups,
leather and leg-smoothing.
Wayland smiling twistily at her old mum
holding no grudges the money didn't run
to orthodontics, wanting none.
And the valkyrie Legget?
Collecting bodies of land-forms under the solstice summer
for fun.
A hot afternoon,
home to my cool room
but on the way
like an amber courtesan lay
a ginger cat
wriggling friendly and fat
in his silk jacket.
Over him stooped the local fool
also fat, enhanced by the coral cat
on the pavement, cooing.
I watched them interact
and found it –
as they say –
moving.