The One Degree

On 09/11/2015 an online BBC news piece reported that: 'Global temperatures are set to rise more than one degree above pre-industrial levels according to the UK's Met Office.'

I thought they wouldn’t notice the one degree    
But they did, the shuddering downwards line

Made without ruler, old felt tip

-          The question of angles I hadn’t revised.

The teacher’s apple then a romantic myth

But still the lines – explain yourself

I said that the sun was in my eyes

They said that I should have asked for help.

We disputed numbers for a while, the test

Which meant I had not passed the term

Instead pressed , like a faulty vehicle

Into the detention of a darkened room.

The sense of cold upon a plastic bench

Listening to the fog of traffic after school

Wet-stinking shoes to which my toes were pressed

Wept at the weather, called, that year, unseasonably cruel.

But what I could not help noticing then

Was the crawling stench of food, forgotten

Pretending ambiguity in the in the paper bin

Which was made of metal, the contents rotten.

But the same routine – rinse, replace – repeats

The enforced shame of ‘doing maths the wrong way’

And on the desk now, that apple flares

A rotten core beneath a polished face.