The dentist shows me photographs
of my teeth, their vintage fillings
glisten silvery like mountain lakes,
their alpine peaks ground down
from years of carrots, nuts, crackers
apples, chocolate, chewing gum
sunflower seeds, popcorn kernels
blackened in the sizzling pot.
He shows me the places where the silver
has turned into wedges;
there are the fissures in the rock
that threaten to split my trusty molars
into shards. It’s all happening now:
my knees buckle as I’m walking,
my uterus is tired, my feet deformed,
my nails have taken in fungi,
my mind is heavy with memories
and opinions it has picked up
along the way like a glacier
acquires rock debris. I see not just
my mouth as shown on the dentist’s
screen but my whole being
as a moraine where the still
slowly-moving glacier of my life
dumps whatever it has picked up
along the way. When I die
all that will remain will be
the meaningless bits broken off
the mountains of experience.
I will have melted and joined
my eerie blue glacial waters
with the brown and turgid
swirling of the sea.
Tamara Madison