Once I was a geography teacher, 

Coloured chalk and the spirit narcotic of Banda machines

Graffitied textbookss and dusty slides. 

Lists of things that must be named and some jokes I tell

Every year, every year….

Store cupboards filled with useless things, 

Broken globes, blown projector bulbs 

And cobwebbed atlases

Naming a world that no longer exists, 

Of meetings to discuss why we must teach different things and 

Whose turn it is to plan the activities of next term

Which will be the same as last 

But with a new list of things to be learnt

Then discarded. 

Inconsequential things

That narrate the lesson and fill the books and 

When all else fails lets draw a map with vivid colours which children like do

Labelling things they will never see.

Pingos and terminal moraines

Rubber plantations and crops of the Irrawaddy delta

Broken drawers full of dusty rocks 

Too grey with age to tell one from another. 

Let us write of such things and the weary plod through the term, 

Marking books in red ink 

Comments that no one will read,

Guilty about not giving house points but what is the point

Now it is dark and cold and night has filled my classroom, 

Full of ghosts that write their points in the wood of the desks, 

Transients who come and go and leave no impression behind 

But a set of well marked books 

And the silence of a class who like to label things for an hour 

And that is my appraisal passed 

‘How quiet your class Mr P. Well done.’ 

Footsteps recede along the corridor

Until the end of the term and I can leave the ghosts behind 

And travel to the Lakes or Wales and climb and tell stories to my friends

Of my life in a sleepy southern town 

To which I will add drama 

For who will believe that five days a week I go to a place 

To drone for five hours  

About things that don’t matter

Controlling children with voice and eye, 

A giant confidence trick, 

A magicians illusion of power 

Only for me a tight rope which becomes thinner every year 

As I rise in rank

And lose faith in my own invincibility.