I'm Not Crying. I Just Got Something In My Eye: An Analysis of Thomas Lux's "Little Tooth"

A Little Tooth

Thomas Lux, 1946-

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.

I know. Touching, right? Well, maybe not for everyone, but for me, a father with a teenage daughter who just outgrew me by an inch, this poem is lovely and bittersweet. I won't get into the platitudes of parental love, but let's just say the end of my daughter as adolescence is approaching sooner than I'd like to admit. This is all to say I'm a sucker for this poem.

But I digress.

The poem really begins with the title. This idea of the “little tooth” or baby teeth, our first sign of aging, of maturing, of growing up and becoming this other thing known as a meat-eating adult.

Lux carries the image from the title into the first stanza. I don’t want to get into scansion with the poem, but the first stanza has three beats in each line, while the second and third stanzas have four beats in each line. The first stanza has a rhythm to it that begins slow (“Your baby grows a tooth, then two”) but rapidly picks up speed in line two (“and four, and five”), then slows down again (“Then she wants some meat/directly from the bone”). The image here of wanting meat is profound as babies represent fuzzy-wuzzy innocence while a meat eater suggests something more primal, animalistic, and even predatory.

The line “It’s all over” kills me. It suggests the ephemeral nature of time, how “time flies” and before you know it, your baby girl is grown and there the father sits powerless as his little girl brings home a string of losers (“cretins, dolts, a sweet/talker on his way to jail”).

And where do I, the father, fit in all of this? I’m not getting off easy either. As the daughter ages, so does the father. Lux uses the precise (and disturbing) word “flybown” to show age.

But despite decrepitude, I think the poem ends with a bittersweet image of pride and love. The subject of the poem, the “you”--let’s face it--it's me, “rue[s]” nothing. No regrets: “You did, you loved, your feet/are sore.” I love the phrase “you did.” Despite it being very general. “You did” is powerful, meaning “you did things.” You fought wars, you raised a family, started a business, had open-heart surgery, etc.

And the lovely last images of “sore feet,” suggesting tired, worn out, older, while “dusk” suggests nightfall is coming, the end, the big sleep. But no regrets. Look at your daughter. Be proud. She’s “tall.”

Don't mind me. I'll just be over here trying to get this dust out of my eyes.