Smuggler

Smuggler

Two boys with red eyes
are in answer to the corridor.
Blazered backs flat up again the plastic staircase
they sneak between gauze doors.

Ruth in French class knows this
and is force feeding a piece of paper
some scree of her morse brain
in sketches.

She think climbs a fir tree
string knots alarm bells,
makes an abacus calculation
of the number of eyes watching
as she hip shifts her weight down the chalk slope.

She is an old elephant
with eyes the size of church plates
a trunk able to hurricane
punk up hair.

Still she missed a bit,
Liam standing behind her in line
flicks out a board pointer finger
and script smiling at her
thick white chest
quips 'which floor please'.