My 7 year old niece came to visit. We took her to the Natural History Museum. Edie met her forefather, Neanderthal Jones and she shook the three-fingered hand of Tyrannosaurus Rex and she danced the do-si-do with Allosaurus and she swam alongside a sei whale, who combed her hair with his fine baleen.
After the museum, Edie saw lots of people close together, waving blue, red and yellow flags in the air and holding banners of words and shouting. They were saying something that they cared about a lot to do with a man called Maduro. He is the boss of a country five thousand miles away where angels fall.
Edie went on the train under the ground and then she saw a house on the river where the bosses of this country talk and make things up and decide things. Then at quarter past four, the little Bens rang and she curtsied to the tower and yawned into my gloved hand.
At home, while I cleaned the kitchen, she asked me for a piece of lined paper. I gave her my notepad and she sat at my desk.
I opened my notepad today and this is what I found.
If I was with you
the things that we could do
Like go and see Big Ben
If I was just with you then
Edie, age 7
Edie’s poem is the musical beauty of simplicity. It is worth a million of my words.
Yours truly
YW
Image – Stephen Wiltshire sourced here: http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/art_gallery.aspx?Id=3855
Yasmin Ward 