Writer in Residence

Writer in Residence

Writer in Residence

I arrive in the classroom during Geography lesson.
Thirty tongues equally slow to loosen,
till a boy asks to read. I sit on a table and listen

to how a beast in calf on a neighbour’s farm
took three hours to deliver but came to no harm.
Now the hands soar up, each child’s “I am”

proved aloud from the looping, unjoined script
that fills the flimsy copy-books they grip
and come the end of the year will mostly scrap

with hardly a second thought as they move on.
Who’ll read to me then? I sit with them while I can.
They read and read long after the bell has gone.