The Y Valley

The long tree boat will soon set sail – bye-bye! – Only to places beginning with Y Y is its shape – and that’s the reason why All the places have to begin with Y! So off it goes with a good wind behind it: To Yemen, Yass, Yalta, Yuba City, To York, Yellow Knife, Yangtze To Yellow Stone Park, Yellandu! Phew. To Yala, Yukon, Yamba, Yichang, To Youngstown, Yushu, Yushkozero, To Yelwa, Yabrud, Young Range, Yubari And finally, you guessed it, to the Y Valley! The Y valley

Where absolutely everybody stops to ask Y. Where every answer begins with because… (Y is only interested in Y Not in what, when, how, X or Z.) The long tree boat searches for kindred, roots, Friends in the forest of trees: Barking family members, branches, Who hold out their spindly arms in winter. Explorers find crucial things to take on water. Y are we going where we’re going asks Yana. Because we need to KNOW says Elia Doza. We’re going to find the soft land across the water.

And to the new land we will bring: A rotting old bicycle, a soggy ball, a small frog, A marshmallow, shells, a toaster, a leaf, Some charcoal and a bath to fill with water. What’ll we miss asks Oliver? I’ll miss the rainbow tree, its pitter-patter Answer Lucy, Ellie and Yana together! I want to take a banana, says Eva’s twin Ana. And so off we set sail again On the boat of many questions Hoping we’ll definitely see sea-lions, Irrawaddy dolphins, red-lipped batfish,

Jumbo octopus, living rocks, secret caves, The magic box, a bearded vulture, aging stones A Gobi gerboa, giant oarfish, Pacu fish And, at the bottom of the sea, a sole buried wish. Safe to say, we return to the Y valley always: A dip and a flip away, a skip and a jump away. It is endless, the way one Y leads to another, The way everybody asks y, y, Y The livelong day, sun up to moon swoop; Birds take flight like questions in the sky. We take it all in with our bold-beady eyes. Whoops. We’re off again, must hurry – bye!