My Nephew Johnny's 40th Birthday

No One Thought He'd Make It To Ten.

So how did Johnny reach his Fortieth year?
After all those very near
poisonings and drownings and being pierced
by rusty nails
(he gave the fiercest of wails)....

He was also very nearly fried
when he tried
to make a Monster
(Frankenstein)
by putting a wire into an electric line
His cry reached higher than of any operatic songster.

And then there was the time that a cashew nut
that we'd fed him
after we'd led him
home soaked from the moat
stuck in his throat,
we should have just let him go in that boat,
and he choked
but, even then, death did not smote
this curious child.
He survived that too
and remained just as wild.

And so it's no surprise
that Johnny (still alive),
became a Doctor; a fixer
of flesh and bones:
He'd spent his childhood in that dangerous elixir
of emergency room groans
without which he would have felt alone.

"Now what has changed," you might enquire.
" To all that has gone previously or prior?"
Well " Hurrah" we sing like an exhuberant choir.
"Now he's got Beryl and baby Mia,
an excitment and joy much, much higher,
than any chaotic emergency room maddy
which, although it had long been an addiction to this Highland Laddie,
can never, never compare to the thrills of being a Daddy.