His strides have stretched from three to my one
to five to my three,
his hands are his and mine are mine,
but we climb together, crunching up
the trail to school. He takes a running leap
at each water-filmed ice patch, slides
and skitters into gravel, bounds ahead
to leap again while I plod stodgy,
etch grey exhortations,
hunched with an age less carried
than born of contrast. As he bounds
he babbles, prehistoric vistas
coiling through missing teeth--the sky
boils with Pteranodons,
Deinonychus prances in the oaks,
Compsognathus clucks from shrub to shrub--
and slowly my spiked tail retracts, my spine
uncurls.

 
NaPoWriMo 2005, April 2