You grip when I slip on my tall tree trip
up a staircase made of roots.
You thump as I jump off the old oak stump
to land in my boots boots boots!
You squeak but don’t leak when I cross cold creek
or peer in the pond for newts.
You giggle, for the wiggle of the water tickles
as I stand in my boots boots boots.
All spring, you sing as you make me spring
over the ground’s new shoots.
You dance as I prance round the popped-up plants,
grand in my boots boots boots.
You splash when I crash through a wave’s white flash
that smoothes our stomp-stamped routes.
You stick as I kick through the seaweed slick
with sand in my boots boots boots.
When you’re left by yourself on the old boot shelf,
don’t feel abandoned, boots.
When it’s time to play, I’ve the best big day
planned for my boots boots boots!
*
Catherine Olver is a children’s poet and ecocritic with a PhD in children’s literature from the University of Cambridge. She’s fascinated by how literature can help children and adults participate in their environments with sensitivity and joy. Her poems have appeared in Tyger Tyger’s Animals issue, The Caterpillar, and Northern Gravy, among other magazines and anthologies. Her wellington boots are a dark, shiny green, but they’re covered in illustrated flowers—and real mud, obviously.
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