In Spain

“Faster, faster!” you shouted at the
toiling donkey straining at the hill.
You were 3 or 4 and we laughed, as parents do,
at our budding bully.
We still have the pint-sized flamenco dress
and the castanets and the fan over which
you already knew to bat your eyes: because
children practice all their lives to be adults,
and sometimes they succeed.