Her Green Domain (Poetry)

The school is gone — those playing fields
where she once blew her whistle shrill
have disappeared, the hard courts, too —
all redeveloped. Never will

the air reverberate with shouts
of hockey girls — their whooping cries
or sounds of tennis balls on gut
that punctuated summer skies

be heard again. Red brick can’t speak
nor tarmac talk or whisper yet
of all those games she refereed —
they’re blotted out so can’t reflect

what once was here — her green domain
where she was undisputed queen
of every chalk-marked length of turf
and all those battles fought between.

She’s long in exile — old — retired
her teaching days a glory lost
and where she is, and if she lives
resigned to progress — its true cost

unknown to those of us she taught
and still remember her as “Miss”
we wonder if she ever dreamed
how things would change and come to this.

Our school is gone — those buried fields
beneath a concrete ocean lie
while ghosts from sports day afternoons
still crowd around her — haunt my eye.