A collection of poems and other writings...

Monday 30 June 2014

The Foot


 After Lunch
Mrs Gantry and Mrs Curtiss
would patrol the playground.

Mrs Curtiss was warm and friendly
as wax crayons.

Mrs Gantry was as spiky
as a fork.

The girls all loved Mrs Curtiss
and they bundled her from one game to another.
The brave ones sometimes
linked arms with Mrs Gantry
and her grey face
melted for a moment.

On Thursday,
it was
Richard Barnes and me
and John and Robert Jarvis.
We were talking
about tractors.

Robert was sitting
on the playground tarmac -
his shorts were baggy
and from where I was sitting
I could see his willy -
Attribution: Dave Fergusson
but his Dad had a Massey Ferguson
so I didn’t say anything.

All the girls had taken
Mrs Curtiss and Mrs Gantry
all the way
to the end of the field
where the wire-link fence
looked out into the wood.




Then
an infant
brought the message back -
they were showing them
a foot.

A what?

A foot!

How?  Where?  A What?

A foot -
honestly -
it is one.
Come and see.

So we had to go and look.
And it was a foot -
wasn’t it?

You could see it clearly
sticking out from behind the tree.
It was a foot
about five feet up in the air
sticking out from behind that tree.
Wasn’t it?

Somebody must be hiding there -
with their foot
sticking out.
But they were very still.

Did they know we had spotted them -
well - their foot?
We ought to call the police.

It might be a thief
or an outlaw
or somebody from St Gregory’s.

Lets Get Them.

We all wanted to climb over the fence and get them.
Well Ralph Bond didn’t.
And neither did Christopher Farrell.
Helen Cross said we couldn’t
and we wouldn’t dare anyway.
I said I did dare
I just didn’t want to go ...

Then Mrs Gantry said nobody
was going to ‘get them’
because there was nobody to be got.
She sent Christopher Downton
over the fence.

We were very quiet
as he tiptoed
up to the tree
with the foot sticking out and
pulled it off!

When he brought it back
you could see
it was just a bit of old toadstool
growing out of the other side of the tree.
I said I thought it was going to be something like that -
Richard said he did too -
and then the bell went
and we had to go
and do
papier mâché.



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