Ken's Poetry

The Language Instinct

Intriguing to think the child,
whose parents speak a foreign pidgin tongue,
from the pre-school age of three
can add the structure and words
to make a language.
Just as the genes contain the plan
to send nail-cells to the finger’s end,
so also in the brain the patterns form
to make language an instinctive thing.
Intriguing yes, but no surprise,
having listened to them recreating language
at that questioning age before
the dust of adult care
when they were squeaky clean.