What Waits and Waits and Waits, Ammonite Like, Behind the Ribcage

 

What Waits and Waits and Waits, Ammonite Like, Behind the Ribcage 

"If what we see could forget us half as easily,"

        I want to tell you,

"as it does itself -- but for life we'll not be rid

        of the leaves fossils."

                                            Elizabeth Bishop

                                            Quai d'Orleans

As if after all these years, (forty six this past

summer, the teeth, held cement still

with their once-in-a-blue-moon shift

(and this, unpredictable, ripples unbidden

the carpet under my hairline, and though

no one walks there anymore I feel myself  

tripping up there from time to time) the zipper's

coming undone almost all at once. How 

some begin at the bottom, you know

the struggle, and the worst of it is trying

to bring the zipper down the split path

that's gone in two untidy directions.  And

there's unspeakable need for hurrying, 

to pull up to start again to pull down,

the familiar ripping sound beneath 

the familiar pinched machine so simple

in its duty.  But this.  Fresh as the garment

is and clean, on closely seeing, two or three 

teeth have worked their way loose.  Hanging

by a root and useless, they bar the proper

road and easy as being a March northeasterly 

breeze that sweeps the feet free, the cautious

meets the traumatic, and the impact fracture

begins to live a different life, in safety

pins at the hem and hidden and discrete

enough and the most walk by the flutter

of the tremble of being seen beneath old seas

or blooming battlefields excuse the lifting

fingers crutched like little fists that try

to claw their perch of earth soundlessly,

heart staccato under the finally coming undone

forty six years later teeth closing in

on the small child's four year old cheek.