Michael Henry
Prunes De Damas
The Design Technology teacher
said they were mint as ball-bearings.
The Art teacher wanted to transfer them to a bowl
and paint their fugitive Indian summer.
The Home Economics teacher wanted to pour in
an avalanche of white sugar and make confiture.
The Music teacher wanted to scale up and down with them like bells
and the IT teacher wanted to make a Michaelmas logo.
The Maths teacher wanted to share them
as an exercise in short division.
The History teacher admired their Tyrian purple
and the RE teacher wanted to go with them on the Road to Damascus.
The Science teacher wanted them as atoms in his model of a molecule
and the Biology teacher saw juicy red corpuscles.
The German teacher spluttered Damaszenerpflaumen
and the French teacher made a tiny mouth and trilled prunes de Damas.
The English teacher who was a bit of a wit
coined a phrase: “Life isn’t a bowl of damsons”.
The Geography teacher demonstrated
how a hardy sub-group could survive.
Only the PE teacher didn’t see anything in them,
for it was he who confiscated them from the little boy
picking behind the bushes instead of running round the field.
Which is why they are languishing in the staffroom,
in tupperware, growing sadder and sadder
like ball-bearings in need of an oil change.
Page(s) 19
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