A Little Tooth
Thomas Lux - 1946-2017
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.
From New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Copyright © 1990 by Thomas Lux. All rights reserved.
“Little tooth” or baby teeth, is our first sign of aging which is what this poem is about, aging and its natural progression and not fearing the experience
