Boy Dandy: Birthday Poem For Mater

She says I'm her Boy Dandy.
She lets me lick her head.
It took months of wide-eyed pleading,
But now we share the bed.

She's got her grievances with me,
She lists them almost nightly;
I only take her slipper
To keep her fit and sprightly.

She races after me with
One foot slippered, one foot not.
I hide the shoe in some dark place
that Time, and I, forgot.

My beard's too long and shaggy
I suspect she wants to shave it.
Sometimes I don't eat dinner,
I bury it and save it.

I might tuck it underneath her coat
And nobody I'd tell
And nobody's the wiser
Until it starts to smell.

I'm partial to an orange
So I borrow some of hers
If she peels and pips it first for me;
We're both fruit connoisseurs.

She says I chew the blanket
In my sleep, but just a corner:
I've never seen me do it
So I could hardly warn her.

She understands my naughty streak
For she was once as young,
Like me she didn't always know
Just when to hold her tongue:

She has to hush me sometimes
When I think it's right to bark.
She was brazen as a girl, she tried
To read books after dark-

No, the candle wasn't quite the thing
To hide under the sheet
But I'll always find the positive:
I'll bet that hole was neat.

So perhaps I tear around the house
Like a tiny jet-fuelled rocket;
And it could be that I eat money,
And tissues from her pocket,

And maybe I chew the fireside logs
And eat the splinters- maybe.
But her heart remembers how she once
Ate hailstones as a baby:

She scooped them up and ate them whole
The way some folks eat jam,
Reached out a chubby girl-fist
When they landed in her pram.

She must have thought they tumbled
From the sky for her delight:
The difference between us, now you see,
Is minuscule and slight.

She forgives me all that I do wrong
And loves the rest.
Her birthday's coming so I've got
To try and look my best.

I've never seen her birthday,
This is one I cannot miss.
I'll bring to her my playful eye
And a great big wet-beard kiss.

She says I'm her Boy Dandy.
She knew me when we met.
It took almost sixty-two whole years
But at last, I am her pet.