2nd Birthday

Watching the ants crawl over grass and sand,
the winged queen ones on plants, and bees on the flowers,
talking to cats and dogs across the fence,
playing with toy sheep, sweeping aside brick-towers,
imposing yourself on all creation since
it seems designed for you to understand,
you find your way through depth-of-childhood land.

Sometimes you pause; more often you go tumbling
in amongst the numbers and colours of things,
reading a comic upside-down, or loudly
crowing and shouting when your mother sings,
or grabbing the razor when I shave and proudly
throwing it over the room – or busily grumbling
for a banana – in an exultant bumbling

you travel on, finding out new ways.
Sometimes you pause; and then your life is one,
and you are David. No-one sees this happen:
it happens to each of us and it is gone;
and life is richer for it and more open.
In the grand whirl of the world, come slight delays;
even with you, in your king-of-the-sandpit days.