Toth Farry

In the back of the charm-box, in a sack, the baby 
canines and incisors are mostly chaff, 
by now, split kernels and acicular down, no 
whole utensils left: half 
an adz; half a shovel, in its broken 
handle a marrow well of the will 
to dig and bite. And the enamel hems 
are sharp as shell-tools, and the colors go from 
salt, to bone, to pee on snow, to 
sun on pond-ice embedded with twigs 
and chipped-off skate-blade. One cuspid 
is like the tail of an ivory chough 
on my grandmother's what-not in a gravure on my mother's 
bureau in my father's house in my head, 
I think it's our daughter's, but the dime Hermes 
mingled the deciduals of our girl and boy, safe- 
keeping them together with the note that says 
Dear Toth Farry, Plees Giv Me 
A Bag of Moany. I pore over the shards, 
a skeleton-lover—but who could throw out 
these short pints of osseus breastmilk, 
or the wisdom, with its charnel underside, 
and its dome, smooth and experienced, 
ground in anger, rinsed in silver 
when the mouth waters. From above, its knurls 
are a cusp-ring of mountain tops 
around an amber crevasse, where in high 
summer the summit wildflowers open 
for a day—Crown Buttercup, Alpine Flames, 
Shooting-Star, Rosy Fairy Lantern, 
Cream Sacs, Sugar Scoop.