I DON’T MEAN IT NASTILY
It isn’t a plot. It’s what cultured humans don’t admit:
bright scarlet blood in lips attracts
wry bitter-wrinkly grey
drunks eyeing us imploringly
do not: we feign busy
put off by guilt. Boys girls everybody opts
without a moment’s pause for sunshine
caught radiantly in wire billows netting
the all-girls-school playing fields away
from traffic, from pedestrians.
Sun switches on
grassy greenness, starts sugars brewing
and embryonic pollens, if not stopped
by being mown flat into sexless carpeting.
Today girls clung to lozenges of wire, as high
as they’d managed to climb
and shouted hellos at lads passing
admit it happens everywhere
just like this. Spinster graduate
teachers with hard-luck expressions
can bugger off this minute. We’re not
being horrid, but they’d catch us
red-handed laughing red with shame
and ruin our fun!