my cello teacher once asked me

can you move your little toe independently?

like, why did they evolve

surely we’d be OK without these weirdos

just four is fine

she’d been thinking about this in the bath

easing her bones the day after she’d

slept the night in the police station

for protesting animal rights down at the port

with her mate, an old blues singer

they liked getting in the way

of those big three tier lorries of sheep

all squashed in

when she asked that, when I was about Grade 4

I thought she was the most interesting

and unexpected person I knew

sometimes, often, I’d come in for a lesson

and there would be a note on the door

Mrs Wilson is not here today

and I’d smile and know

she’d been arrested again

adjacent to anarchy, I would sit on my own

and play my favourite school cello

that was not permitted for loan

better than when anyone was listening

she once came into the bookshop

where I had a Saturday job

and surprised me with her pride

to see me behind the till

I wrapped up her book because it was Christmas

and she pushed the other one she’d just bought

and scribbled in

back over the counter to me, an unexpected gift

I didn’t much like the book but I kept it coz

it has her illegible handwriting on the flyleaf

later, I had to choose between music lessons

or a school trip to CERN

centre européenne pour la recherche nucléaire

we had just enough money

for one of those things, not both

I picked the particle physics because

I couldn’t stop running my bow

over the sound of all those words

the quarks and cloud chambers

I hope she didn’t mind, Mrs Wilson

such a pluck of guilt

how I admired her gut strings and spirit

but never said so, even when I got to Grade 5

she was one of the wise untamable ones

vibrating with what she knew, already ancient

I’d love to invite her for a cuppa now

we’d be friends but she’s too real

to be searchable on the internet

plus I’m sure she must by now be dead

I never became a cellist or a particle physicist

but I noticed today in the bath

that I can move my little toe on its own