None of our Teachers are Missing!

The hot day all the teachers fled to the pub
and forgot to come out was a Tuesday.
Lunch stretched liquid long with chips,
and time slid slowly into afternoon.
Afternoon? They should be back in classrooms!
With one great gulp, they lurched, they sped
towards a storm of magnitude:
the distant rumble of a Sackable Offence!

But at two o’clock the school was almost silent.
A secretary tapped away beyond an open door.
Pausing to wipe her brow, she saw no teachers
creeping low and late along the corridor.
The head, in the cool of the stockroom
rooting through reams and learning schemes,
seemed unaware that teachers tiptoed by.
Sneak thieves of time, they all returned,
each to their own abandoned realm
where, joy, no riots raged, no edifices fell
but semi-melted children stuck to plastic seats,
thumbed idly through books or drew
their Mums with airborne hair in glorious orange wax.

Annie Kissack

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Annie Kissack would be pleased to hear them