These Teeth

These teeth would require stout boots

If you wanted to traverse them

Just for sport or perhaps in search

Of the living language that lies 

In the darker cavern just behind.

These teeth don’t take rollerskates

The ones that the frozen lake teeth 

Of the great blond cheerleaders 

Advertise for triumphant swoops

Across their perfectly icy surfaces.

These teeth were made on wellwater

Still hold shades of the grey granite

That still sets the underground tone

Of the New England woods I walked

Thinking about anything but teeth.

These teeth take on new colors

Every year, off-whites of crowns

Browns of coffee, darkening lights

Of red wines Nebbiolos and Cabernets

And Pinots that make the blood sing.

These teeth resemble my father’s

On his last day, gray ruins running

North forever like the stone walls

Of my boyhood woods leading me

Always into country I do not know.

These teeth are the only bones

That show, even though the others

Wait just below the skin 

Or sheath of muscle fascia

To reveal the last white silence.

These teeth are the last barricade

Of good judgment before words

I cannot take back fly forth

To build walls just as invisible

As the loneliness they inflame.

These teeth need something to bite into

Something that feeds the flame

In the soft center of this hard shell

Some food not found on the shelves

Of the store aisles we wander all day.

© Bill Prindle, 2016

Stone wall and bridge; Tolland County, Connecticut
Photo by Ken Holm
Library of Congress
from Wikimedia Commons