Fixed apatite
Like the land around here, I carry an inverse tangle
of roots close by. Nourishment, speech, tooth-grit anger
born in this calcium cavern until something rots through
and pain begins. And in the deep places we walk together,
my pain and I, torch in hand we walk to where gratitude lives
and draw the blurry outline of self-awareness, my jawbone
slaying clarity and sense. Transformed, chewed up, laid out
in the endodontist’s chair, new healers meet old healers in
the deep places and bless my branching stalagmite’s root.
*****
Back from the dentist. Whew.
*****
And on a tenuously related note, the new Festival of the Trees is up at Lorianne's blog. Go see what's rooted there!
3 comments:
a snarly, gnarly place, the canal to the root system; hm-hm-hm (sound of remembered pain - call it empathy)
but...this? "In the United States, apatite is often used to fertilize tobacco. It partially starves the plant of nitrogen, which gives American cigarettes a different taste from those of other countries."
Starvation of the roots through...fertilization? Do you Americans have no shame?
Nah, we have no shame. But you knew that.
:-)
I considered using the term "hydroxylapatite," except it was less musical and funny (or at least seemed so in my pain-killer-suffused state.)
For a more redeeming look at apatite, see here:
http://images.google.com/
images?hl=en&q=apatite+gem&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
I just wrote box elder that "After great pain, a formal feeling comes" was my favorite "relief" poem.
This seems a hard way to gain poems. I like it, but next time go for another inspiration!
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