Hallucinated Reality 0: Departure Gate - Andrew Barham

Walking up to Chuet

For that penultimate morning swim
I finally realise
What the difference is
Between me and them –
Other teachers …

Crying everywhere I go
Walking through the corridors of Heathrow
To the Departure Gate …

Certain songs on my iPod …

African songs
Sitting on the dolmen
In my garden
Drinking red wine
Waiting for Shaun to arrive;
It's Spring,
My first
In Mon Desir …

How I love this place
And its people,
For the healing has begun –

My little cat …

Half wild when I first moved in
Shy
Slow to approach,
Bigfoot,

Because
He has extra claws
On his paws …

He comes round
From time to time
And nobody knows
Where he's from

He comes round
On my last day
While I'm frantically packing away
So I sit down
On the sacred ground
With him
Sobbing uncontrollably:
It's finally bursting out
All over me
The sadness
I've been holding in …

Listening to African songs
Sitting on the Dolmen
Drinking wine
While waiting for Shaun …

Listening to African songs
On the moving walkways
Through Heathrow
Heading for the Departure Gate
Wave after wave of sorrow
Breaking over me
As I try to hold it all in

Walking up to Chuet
For that penultimate morning swim
Trying not to cry
As a great wave of sorrow
Bursts out all over me
And I finally realise
The difference
Between Them and me:

I always worked with the kids
On their own terms
Within the limits of classroom management

Other teachers dictate the terms
Under which they will allow the kids
To work for them,
Fuelling their resentment
Against teachers
Forever …

No wonder
The other teachers
See me as a threat;
I represent
A loss of control
The antidote

To the Orwellian world
Of the classroom
The teaching community
Struggles perpetually
To perpetuate
It's their Hallucinated Reality.

Walking back from Chuet
To Heathrow's Departure Gate
I finally realise I'm saying goodbye
To Guernsey, my home …

Andrew Barham

This is part of a series of "Hallucinated Reality" poems in which the title is actually imbedded within the poem. Thus, these poems are titled, but the title does not appear at the top, but somewhere within the poem.