Al Dente

My son, just twelve, gives me a ripened look
and taps a tooth. Everything, he says,
has an al dente. Like these scrambled eggs.
Even a golf swing can be overcooked.

The last thing I expected, the unlooked-
for fruit of one furtively fertile day,
he dropped into my lap the windfall way
of an apple (or golf ball), and I took
him on – slightly overshooting my green,
perhaps, a little past maternal prime
at 39 but cooking still; he was proof.

Today he puts a plate in front of me
and leans in for a kiss, his skin as fine
as a Northern Spy’s, smooth and to the tooth.