A humorous poem stretching for metaphor as inspired by a partially-apocryphal tale of an autistic savant able to seemingly preternaturally pick out supernovae from the night sky.

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A man once claimed himself as able,

If you spread salt on a table,

Let him study it a bit,

Then turn around and have a sit,

While you, outside of his purview,

Take a grain and add it to,

Could turn back ‘round

And make it found!

Our laughter almost to a shout,

We picked a grain and flicked it out,

Turning around he spied the spread,

Looking with eyes and not his head,

Then very calmly breathed and spake,

‘You meant to lend but you did take.’

‘Impossible!’ thought we aloud,

While he just sat there smiling proud,

Then bent over onto the floor

And looked not for a second more,

Then, as if to only prove our fault,

Came back up with our grain of salt.

He dropped it in his leather bag

And from his pipe he took a drag;

Bowed us all a fair goodbye

And with a wink of his blue eye,

Turned and left the way he came

And none of us did feel the same.

We stopped him quick and asked his trick,

He said, ‘they never give, they always flick.’