Madison Tastes Chocolate Cake

This is Madison on her first birthday tasting chocolate cake

Setting it down on the high chair her parents record the encounter

with laughter they prod her

taste

Madison obliges patting both hands down onto frosty brown icing then raises tiny fists

to lick slowly we see the astonished surprise

 "Is this real?" her eyes implore just before 

lowering

her entire face 

onto the cake. 

Madison on her first birthday reminded me to want

To feed my desire; to devour in entirety
with the wide mouth of my heart.
I make a wish that she will be
unconcerned with pretty and sweet; this
child will become a woman who eats, who will overreach her pudgy fingers grasping for more. 

Madison makes me wonder when I feel the pull, the surprise of newly discovered pleasure - 

How far down it goes and
when this well was sprung?
As if I could reach back
to feel the warmth of
milk filling me.
Or deeper yet to float
back to the gentle swaying,
the primordial peacefulness
of my first paradise.