April 10th
The prompt today did not inspire me, so I wrote something I’ve been meaning to get out of my head for some time.
The weight on her shoulders is visible from 200 yards,
Or 182.88 metres if you attend her school.
No doubt her physics teacher would praise her capacity to carry the mass,
If only he was privy to her conversations with Pastoral Care,
Maybe then he would review his assessment.
But he’s not, and he won’t.
Like all the others, all he sees is the outside, the exoskeleton that hides her inner tortured soul.
The list of her body tilts her, angles her just enough to distance herself in the queue.
Her distance is no object, she’s cultivated that space to perfection.
Granted, the able assistants have played their parts,
But she blocks that out – it’s her choice, her decision, not to be part of that group.
Of any group for that matter.
She’s a child born of unfinished dreams,
A rose forced to bloom in the shadow of expectation,
The petals of her eyes so seldom glancing upward to take in the sun.
Nurtured on a diet of future career honey, she settles for white label jam today.
Every day.
Her book-laden bag straps serrate her shoulders, arcing her spine in the process.
The school bus trundles into view as her youth slips away over the horizon.
She adds nothing to the chat, cackle and chaos as the bus is boarded,
Another day in paradise beckons as diesel cloud is all that remains at the bust stop.
Graham Parker's Poetry 