^{_{Photo credit: Dirk Skiba}}

Teachers

Teachers fell like rain in our house. They spun
around our garden in feather braids and kaftans.
When I tell you they were everywhere,
it’s not a metaphor for learning. They shared
our sofa, hogged our sun loungers, whatever
the weather. Japanese fan, kagool, umbrella.
Imagine the shame to look outside and find
your teacher gripping spoons, banging your bins

like two steel pans? When I recall my childhood,
I’m in the bath, an unrelenting teacher
sat on the sink, defining fluvial flood.
How many evenings, burrowed in my bed,
did some teacher coax me from my slumber
to tell me something Boudicca said?

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Sonnet for Cox’s

The apples of my childhood were mostly Cox’s –
rough-skinned with yellow flesh, and pips that rattled
when shaken. Apples of the 70s.
In training as a woman, I assembled
the trolley – tins at the bottom, fruit on top.
I asked the butcher for chicken roll by weight
and trailed the chilly aisles of the Co-Op
like a bride beside my mum. I learnt

the bright green apples, foreign, stacked like baubles,
were not for us, tendering our coupons
to the till-girl, packing our practical apples
to carry home each Saturday, where Nan
was simmering in the kitchen, bruising dough
and forcing in cold butter, to make it grow.