It's five past three.
Sixty-four eyes look at me.
No. Sixty-two.
Not Matthew.
He hasn't learnt to read my face.
He's got digital. A disgrace!
I reach to ten.

When they were young,
She kept wicket for her brothers,
They batted,
Bowled,
Padded up
And ratcheted up the score.
She crouched behind the stumps

Look at the train
Look at the train
Look at the train,
the train, the train!

Rattling by
Clackety-clack
at the back of the houses
up on the track.

The china is in smithereens
before our tea has even brewed
but it hardly matters.
Minotaur is half bull
and a little clumsy
but bigger things have been shattered,

Once upon a plom
There lived a poor little mom
Along with her children three.
There was a great big Gom
A Flom and a Chom
Who all sang, "Me, me, me."

The seagulls are doing their dance again – Wings clasped to their sides, they stare up the street.
Up and down, up and down, go their knobbly pink knees;

In the line you hear a chatter.
Up and down a clatter, clatter.
Noisy schoolgirls scream and shout,
pushing in and pushing out.

Teach me the language of Cat;
the slow-motion blink, that crystal stare,
a tight-lipped purr and a wide-mouthed hiss.
Let me walk with a saunter, nose in the air.