They can dance.

It always amazes me how much you know
how is it that you have so much knowledge
even whilst wearing your little boy disguise
I love the way you glance over the table at me
reminding me of when we played twinkle eye
a game that I guess almost everyone knows
'though they probably call it all sorts of things.

So now we chat about hurricanes and tornadoes
and how you can actually spell the names of five
yes count them, five different types of dinosaur
some of whom I can't even pronounce properly
and I sit here in awe as you reel off the spellings
glowing with pride under my astonished gaze
you really truly do amaze me wonderful boy.

When we talk, who is the adult between us
I in my 47th year or you just starting your 7th
staggered as I am at how much you know
equally surprised when we fall through the gaps
with so little warning of where the edges are
especially given your tendency to leave me here
taking flight into the sky of your own imagination.

If I were to list the many things that the young
do much better than we so-called grown-ups
it would have to include this taking of flight
an ability to extrapolate from the almost known
into the unknown with such unscientific abandon
that it makes a kind of mockery on the one hand
whilst offering a new kind of wisdom on the other.

Is it only the young that dream of the impossible
or is it that on awakening we adults dispel
discount, disrespect our now latent abilities
to take flight even if only in our subconscious
and so it's not for us to sit at the breakfast table
describing riotous rides on pink dancing giraffes
when everyone know that giraffes can't dance.

Except in a story book that we both once read
and dashing upstairs, I on my slightly longer legs
make it first by a whisker to the big bookcase
but with your keener eyes you spot it and crow
the book that we'd read so many months ago
but whose funny story still lives on in your head
making night-time visits of such contagious frivolity.
.
.
.
There really is a book called "Giraffes Can't Dance".
It is one of my all time faves ... yes, and Ollies' too. xx