Dream Big by Le Hinton

Dream Big

My grandson wants to be a ferret.
He explains how cute their little faces are,
how he wants to cuddle them, how everyone
laughs at their high energy antics. If he were a pet ferret,
he says, his ferret mom would feed him snacks all the time.
She’d let him play video games all day. He wouldn’t have
to go to school and do homework at night. Mostly,
he likes how ferrets run around and squeeze
into small places to hide. Life would be pretty cool.

I listen to him, nod, and smile while thinking
that ferrets are luckier than their cousins. Weasels
and polecats make a great snack for hawks and such.
They’ll last about a year before their luck runs out and life
lifts them from this earth. He’s only 8, so, I don’t tell him the cancer
rate for domestic ferrets is 63 percent, which is higher
than humans, but nowhere near the 2 percent for dolphins.

I think how lucky I am not to be a ferret
but secretly I wish I were a dolphin. I never learned
to swim and gliding through the ocean is my version of cool.
With dolphin genetics, there’d be a greater chance
of my not knowing this cancer, bypassing this radiation.
But I don’t utter any of those thoughts though. Instead,
like a good grandpa, I just smile and say, “They sure are cute.”

by Le Hinton

Editor’s Note: This narrative poem teaches the reader to allow space for dreams and hope and welcomes the unexpected joy that young people bring into the world.