"I wanted X"

A COVERED BRIDGE IN LITTLETON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

I can remember when I wanted X
more than anything ever - for X fill in
from your own childhood [list of examples]

[balloons, pencil lead, trading card, shoelaces, a bow
or not to have to wear a bow]

and now I am moved to action, when I am moved,
principally by a memory of what to want.

The point is to be, in your own eyes, what you are,

or to keep your own tools, so that you can pretend.

And so it was no surprise,
to me at least, when Cooper, who is two,
collapsed in "fortíssimo" fits when he could not have
a $20, thre-foot-long stuffed frog
in the image of Frog from "Frog and Toad", since he is Toad.

That morning, needing a nap,
he had thrown, from the third-storey balcony
of Miller's Cafe and Bakery, into the whistling
rapids and shallows
of the Ammonoosuc River, with its arrowheads and caravans of stones,
his Red Sox cap. His hair was shining like
another planet's second sun
as he explained, looking up, «I threw my hat in the river.
I would like my hat back now.»

by Stephen BURT, in "LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS", Volume 36, Number 9, 8 May 2014