Being Five poem
Here’s one of my favourite poems from my childhood. I read it to Gareth today in honour of his birthday.
Being Five by Dennis Lee (in _Garbage Delight_)
I’m not exactly big,
And I’m not exactly little,
But being Five is best of all
Because it’s in the middle.
A person likes to ride his bike
Around the block a lot,
And being Five is big enough
And being Four is not.
And then he likes to settle down
And suck his thumb a bit,
And being Five is small enough,
But when you’re Six you quit.
I’ve thought about it in my mind -
Being Five, I mean -
And why I like it best of all
Is ’cause it’s In Between.
(Dennis Lee is a Canadian poet with several books of ’nonsense / absurdist children’s poetry. To this day there are countless poems from both _Garbage Delight and _Alligator Pie_ I can recite from memory, as my Mom read them to my brother and I countless times when we were children.)