Like In Hot Water, In A Bath, Poem by Liza Sud

This a poem of delight - simple, immediate delights. The references to hot baths, contented infants. etc, show a elementary level of satisfaction. But introducing language development takes us to the end of infancy into the age of consciousness. A speaking child has words and can now focus on particular delights. It's not WaWaWA! until someone responds, it's, Mom, can I eat a cookie. But you also suggest the beginnings of a social and life and even a prayer life. The versatility of language is celebrated.

This is a poem of self-satisfaction, as you affirm in two passages: I FEEL MYSELF SO NICE and I WILL FEEL MYSELF SO PLEASED. But this feeling doesn't come from vanity or complacency. Rather it derives from a child's intuitive and total sense of being. It's a mysterious state we lose as we grow older and more self-conscious, but you've regained it, a renewed state of expectation and even innocence. Very different from what adults usually feel. I'm wondering if behind thgis transformation is an echo of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, that we have to become like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That would explain the dynamics of the poem's sense of fulfillment.