He is nearly seven, but my mind holds clear
the memory of when I offered him the tiger,
the striped, stuffed beast, almost
shiny in its newness.
It had been a birthday gift to me, but
when my son was seven months old,
I handed him the toy.
Tonight Alexander Jon handed him back.
Tiger is aged and flattened and
deformed from passionate clinging.
His nose is rubbed raw, and his eyes
are scratched, his whiskers have
been gone for years.
Do all the dreams from a sleeping child’s head
drip into the tiger-pillow which lays under him
for hundreds of nights?
I shall sleep with Tiger tonight, and
see if my suddenly old woman’s mind
finds a dream to fill the emptiness that’s left
when a baby becomes a boy, and a
boy somehow tells his mother that he
shall become a man.
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