Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all
over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,
your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.
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as a 73 year old grandmother I read this poem on a New York City bus. It so moved me that, lacking paper and pencil, I memorized it. I loved ” your feet are sore” but the last line really hit hard. dds
So simple a poem, and yet profoundly true and touching. I felt the sadness, being a father of a growings teenage daughter, and realizing, yes she is taller, and I am older, and I must let her go. Thank you Thomas Lux.