Taliesin Says “Hot”
(12 months)
Before the moralities come the virtues, he learns
quickly: touched
by stovepipe, for days he convulses on purpose,
practicing rapidity--and that word
said sudden as huffing after having had something
steaming. Breath is warm, and when it warns,
(“Hot!”) it makes a little tongue of flame
(“Hot!”) so you have to get it out quickly
(“Hot!). If you can say it to yourself
first, it happens but doesn’t have the same hurt.
Twisting in his highchair, he points like a lighthouse:
the cup “hot!”, the kettle “hot!”, the woodstove “hot!”,
painstakingly welding the framework. “Tal,”
I wish I could tell him, “if your parents are warm,
it’s only because there were times when other people
were hot,” but I needn’t try, he has his own
outposts on the frontiers of seriousness.
His mother takes him into the bedroom, explaining
“We have to stay in here while Daddy is cleaning
the chimney.” He stops, thinks, and sums up: “HOT!”
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