I’d recognise you from any distance —
even with your back to me,
all packaged up in Petit Bateau, remote
at the edge of a puddle,
clutched tight to a frisbee, maybe worried,
if you let it go, it might continue
in flight forever,
or perhaps you just don’t want to risk
getting your school shoes wet.
Those bobbled socks would stay soggy, even
if you scrunched your toes up under the chair
and ignored them, through numeracy and literacy
with a desk partner engaged 340 degrees,
and a teacher-helper hovering self-aware;
bumble bee deciding how best to dedicate
its resources,
leave you with your wet feet
till home time to recompose
five lego men you managed to snaffle
from the class crate, not exactly unobserved,
but from such telescopic difference
as makes it somehow beyond us
to relate.
On your moon, according the the profile
that accompanied you, children scrabble
for food, hoard what they can, eat by night,
with urgent secrecy, out of reach.
Maybe that explains the covert foraging
in foreign backpacks, that, to their credit,
the others have stopped complaining
about — wonderful how six-year-olds can exercise
such adult tolerance.
Your own age could be determined,
apparently, by the density of bones;
studying your teeth, there was uncertainty.
At the very least, and without being unfair,
I’d have to say you have a gift
for not belonging, which makes it easier
now, as I see you turning —
rocket children avoiding you with dexterity —
satellite, somehow revolving and remaining
still at the heart of our mobile,
perhaps looking for grownup contact
as a last resort; more natural, anyway,
that I veer off towards the other end
of the playground,
where there seems to be a small girl crying.
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