My Fingers
My fingers
are going on an adventure
What fun
Exploring the world
Poking, prodding, whirling
Running
along a rough ridge
of timber freshly sawed –
watch those spikes!
Poking in a pudding
spongy soft with a skin
of smooth creamy custard,
raspy and rough
Holding hands with a friend
her fat, sticky fingers
kissing mine
Sliding a finger along
a prickly strip of string
then a scrap of paper
lying flat and dry
nothing but words
that send love
list groceries
start wars
Exploring the ridged
wet craters of inside my mouth,
Next the damp stubble
of a nostril
Disgusting, says Mum
wash those hands!
The drowning sensation
of tepid water
the satiny surface of soap
the fuzzy tickle
of suds, tiny rising balloons
that wink, and in the
blink of an eye
snap!
Vanish
just like that,
Fingers explore the furriness
of towel…
Dianne Bates
Dianne says: I brain-stormed the topic before realising that the best way of
describing textures was to have a finger or fingers feeling them, hence this
finger exploring some things in a child’s world.
Australian Children’s Poetry 