What do you do with a precocious child noticing the world? I tell you, it's terrible what they can pick up, terrible, terrible. But they aren't the first generation to notice.

The English sparrows 15 feet high
In the hackberry tree,
We also called’em
European sparrows, house sparrows,
The little spatsies,
Are fighting and chattering
Above my lawn chair,
Reminding me of the time
My grandmother tilted
Her white-haired head
To look sideways through her glasses
Down at me.
I’d told her the boy spatsie
Was the one with the outlined stripes
Across his eyes,
The one with with the deeper dark cloak
And little gray cap
While the girl was that plain,
Gray-faced one.

How did you know that,
My Grandma asked me?
Well, I explained to her,
Way before knowing from TV,
That I’d been watching the birds and the bees,
The bull and the cow out in the pasture,
The boar and the sow down by the barn,
The big boys and the big girls,
With their arms around each other.
The roosters and hens,
Where the dog poked his nose,
And you shoulda’ seen
What the tomcat did out at the shed,
With the mama cat a’yowlin, Grandma,
I’d’a liked to giggle myself dead, Grandma.
It was amazing, Grandma.

Well, Grandma explained to me
That I was only eight,
And it was too soon for me
To be noticing so much.
But, Grandma, I told her,
You’re too late,
I’ve learned from that little brown bird,
All the colors and differences
In the world.
That’s how I know, Grandma,
Spatsie love,
Yeah the spatsies are’a doin’ that, Grandma,
Spatsie love,
Yeah, I been’a watchin’ them,
Spatsie love.
Everyday in the yard, Grandma,
Spatsie love.
Why are you waving your arms, Grandma?