The Tooth
by Sophie Cabot Black
No longer simple, if ever was. The coyote lies at the edge
Of the lake. I meant this, I did not; the death I paid for
Has come: a bad job of it, her jaw blown off, her underside
Gone, legs strung up with bailing twine, the body dragged
And quickly buried under leaves. When you pray, when you
Try to pray, words do not correspond in this crowded light,
They become slippery, wrong, not what I meant at all.
My knees sink in the muck, gut-blood and fur
Thicker than imagined, and out of the red wilderness
Of bone and tongue, one lone tooth more clean and white
Than God ever could be. No longer the heart
To take what I came for: the tooth so oddly rising
Out of a midst where the living cling
For whatever they can build of her until there is no trace.
by Sophie Cabot Black
No longer simple, if ever was. The coyote lies at the edge
Of the lake. I meant this, I did not; the death I paid for
Has come: a bad job of it, her jaw blown off, her underside
Gone, legs strung up with bailing twine, the body dragged
And quickly buried under leaves. When you pray, when you
Try to pray, words do not correspond in this crowded light,
They become slippery, wrong, not what I meant at all.
My knees sink in the muck, gut-blood and fur
Thicker than imagined, and out of the red wilderness
Of bone and tongue, one lone tooth more clean and white
Than God ever could be. No longer the heart
To take what I came for: the tooth so oddly rising
Out of a midst where the living cling
For whatever they can build of her until there is no trace.
