We had to keep you under constant surveillance.
If we looked away for even a minute
you might be pulling down the Christmas tree

or eating the cat’s food. You liked anything
small and dusty, and you could spot a crumb
across a large room. Your crawling speed accelerated.

Already at one, you had learned there were
voices inside of the curved thing we held up to
our ears and that closing the door didn’t mean

the rest of the world had disappeared.
You were learning hundreds of words,
letting them roll around in the spaces between

the hunks of familiar color and shape
that wrapped around you in the light,
and sometimes I thought I saw a faint glow

beneath the fuzzy hair on your skull—the flash
of neurons. At one, you had a sense of humor
and didn’t mind acting surprised at peek-a-boo,

but your attention span was short. If you could
hold it in your hand, you held it for a second or two
and then pitched it straight ahead, full force!

I was hoping to interest you in books, art
and ancient civilizations, but it appeared
you might want to play some baseball on the side.

When you went to sleep you listened to classical music
on your special CD and held onto your blue blanket.
You weren’t afraid of the dark—or anything else.