Pull out the tooth
Excalibur from the gum – the wriggle and rattle and
Eventual give since – of course! I am the Chosen One, the Arthur
Of my own, aching epoch.
I keep this milky relic close to my chest, cradle it
Like the dull throb of a newly pierced ear. Run
My tongue hungrily over the lull in the landscape.
I have always buried the broken things at the bottom of my garden:
Shattered crockery, milk teeth, leaves, mottled with rot.
I dig a hole – and with familiar hands deposit this childhood mulch
Replacing the lifted sod I press down firm on the earth
With my bare feet
In a hundred years’ time this soul-compost will be ready,
To make green again.
I plunge my hands into the soil – in search of fossils. The earth is
Cold and embeds itself under my fingernails – pebbled, in miniscule stratum.
There is no room for blood –
And there is no True Empty since
The new tooth has already started to come in
We sheathe our dead in stone and build portals,
Time-capsule our ancestors – so – that the generations
To come can look back and wax
Lyrical about the good-old-days that flit – rare as butterflies.
Chanting the mycelium gospel, that glowing doctrine of rot , that mutual
Dependence is oh-so-necessary to social wellbeing
Those gentle, pulsing, mutualisms
We leave a tumult of freshly turned
Earth in our wake and send out tendrils of digital hyphae
Glittering blue and thrumming with information.
So, tie a string around the truth – make sure the other end is securely
Attached to the doorknob and pull
by Otto Goodwin
