At school I was never all that good at geometry:

Perhaps my pencil was too blunt or my eyesight too dicky,

Or perhaps I just couldn’t be arsed to get it right.

Other boys could, and did.

 

What I do remember is that the most minute inaccuracy

Made at the small source would lead,

Left uncorrected, to greater and greater error

Until the final calculation would be wildly wrong.

I’d get a big red cross (but no detention,

Since the maths teacher was kind).

 

Although I couldn’t know it at the time,

This was the template for a lifetime of bad decisions,

Of not bothering to get things right,

Of not being arsed to do anything about it.

Or perhaps of not knowing how.

One thing leads to another, and before you know it,

You’ve ended up wildly in the wrong place.

 

It’s excusable to get off your train at the wrong station:

The real idiocy is that, knowing you’ve done that and 

Are in the wrong town, you stay there, 

Lost for ever in its wrong streets, not realising,

Until it’s too late to do anything about it,

That your life is a big red cross

And that this time there is no kind old teacher

To let you off the final detention.

 

Chris Proudfoot 25th May, 2019