This is very real and appealing, Bill. Calls to mind so we'll the real
subject and the seeming subject. Thanks, Sheila
On Tue, Sep 10, 2019, 3:53 PM Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Can’t even remember
>
> how it was orchestrated
>
> but in the last two years
>
> of the swinging 60s
>
> Mrs Newitt had us all lined up
>
>
> Four rows of double desks
>
> in Room 4 at Alwyn High
>
> told your story
>
> Against the window,
>
> row one held the cream
>
>
> Based on your performance
>
> in the last maths test, you
>
> could be sitting behind
>
> the perfect shoulders
>
> of flaxen-haired Helen Black
>
>
> - or find yourself in the vicinity
>
> of doe-eyed Dolores Demetriou
>
> or any number of wondresses,
>
> with and without spectacles,
>
> seething with competence -
>
>
> gazing, if you could lift your eyes
>
> from them or the symbol-chalked
>
> blackboard for a moment,
>
> at the flower and shrub-studded
>
> quadrangle garden outside,
>
>
> if, that is, your score was close
>
> to unblemished which of course
>
> it rarely was, so you only, at best,
>
> got to glance at the likes of Helen
>
> from the earnest triers’ row 2
>
>
> or worse, from lowly row 4,
>
> on the corridor side, along
>
> with all those unable to solve
>
> for x or simply confounded
>
> by quadratic equations
>
>
> What were the mechanics
>
> of this furniturean operation?
>
> Surely we didn’t all stand
>
> at the front of the class and
>
> fill seats as scores were read aloud
>
>
> Now I think about it,
>
> we must have been complicit,
>
> just held up our talismanic scores
>
> and moved, forwards or back,
>
> approaching or retreating
>
>
>
> from fixed point Helen,
>
> whose pristine pale yellow
>
> and tan checked tunic
>
> induced a geometric trance,
>
> absorbing and repelling us
>
>
> Years later, form 6 perhaps,
>
> emerging from room 32,
>
> the test room, a bunch
>
> of us were discussing the answer
>
> to the final complex problem,
>
>
> me insisting it was one,
>
> most claiming it was zero,
>
> a smattering of tens,
>
> when a voice from somewhere
>
> stilled the sparrows:
>
>
> ‘It was one, actually.’
>
> The solution already
>
> consigned to the past.
>
> SmiIing, I turned away.
>
> Helen. The one.
>
>
> bw
>
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