Pheasant Teeth

The only prescience we can claim –
by “we” we mean the evanescent army
at the center of “me” we can almost name –
is something not dissimilar to knowing this:
all history is present and accounted for:
its agony and bliss. A pheasant under
glass is simultaneously pheasant egg,
denuded carcass, pleasant feast:
a birdie birth, a harrowing experience

of being hunted, shot, and roasted:
propped onto a plate. Another tasty date
with destiny. We will be a kind of pheasant
under scrutiny today: two wisdom
teeth will be extracted from our beak
and probably we’ll feel a little weak.
But we are every feather we have ever been
and yet another shading in the portrait
of us for which we have sat, will sit

and sit again, should only add another bit
of interest. Too many things are right
to want to change them. We shall hang on
‘til each tooth of wisdom we once thought
we had has been plucked out: replaced
with pleasant pheasant feathers ground
back to a dusty genesis of star.
(Convoluting loops? – distraction from
extraction? That’s the way we are.)


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