Teeth

 

They say that dreams of losing teeth 

are about a power lost,

as if our half-moon row of folded forms — leather-hard, 

enameled glaze — were snatched from us in the firing. 

Isn’t it easy to think? that if only we had been given the chance 

to set our jaw just so — then we could have controlled the kiln.

Still, there is something so powerful in the way a moose molar 

unfolds, hiding nothing, its coiled roots exposed,

as if it knew it would be placed just so 

against a fallen spruce.

Did it resist the fierce fire that freed its light from form?

Or did it merely fall, leaving its half-moon row 

like a talisman, holding both sky and earth as if 

the only way to hold everything is to be wholly in it all.