No amount of scrubbing

Will clean these grubby nails.

These small hands keep scrabbling

At rocks, all kinds of shale.

 

Tiny digits seeking out

Any kind of critter.

Lifting up the stones to scout

Before they reconsider.

 

They scatter as light invades

Their community disturbed.

Futile efforts to barricade

Are nearly always curbed.

 

He deftly scoops the woodlice

As they start to flee.

Tweezer fingers so precise

When he wants them to be.

 

If he could handle a pencil

With such dexterity

There wouldn’t be the immense hill

He seeks for scholastic clarity.

 

If this could be his classroom

How happy he would be.

We count the flowers in bloom

And use chalk rocks for literacy.

 

Your gentle love of nature

And wonder at the earth

Makes you my personal teacher

And reminds me of all it’s worth.

 

So let’s explore the garden,

And play amongst the leaves,

Because as you grow, you’ll harden

To all a five-year-old perceives.

 

Copyright  © Sophie Harrington (2016)

Try Sophie Harrington poems for parents? – Read Slow Down or Little Boys or Little Girls