Home poems 2. Stamford Sixth Form

Stamford Sixth Form (in progress)

 

We walked the town of Georgian chimneys

evading state-school smirks

and flat-faced old women impressed

with our safety/blazer/kilt-pinned

second-hand uniforms for ‘means tested’ girls.

 

Between the school for gelled rugby players

and stone interment for girls,

we traversed Albert Bridge

a haunt for brave flirts and prodigious beauties

our hearts: unpopular and unmolested.

 

You – willowy, studious, no essay undone.

Me – the arty introvert, screwed up –

inheritors of the earth.

 

We parked perspiring nylon

on a bench outside Christ’s Hospital Garden,

exiled from the common room and talking…

Hardy, Austen characters – the lesser known ones,

observing their figures amble

St Martin’s Hill and St Mary’s

as natural echoes of our isolation.

 

Now you write books about costume dramas

from another old stone town,

excavating each frame

with timeless methodology,

 

while I make drama as if wearing

costumes were fast running out of fashion.

 

 

Tamsin15’