HEREDITY Comments

There's no denying
the blood that goes through me
from my mother's side,
leaving one snarled tooth
in the roof of my mouth,
an itching-post in the field
of my thoughts, an ogham stone
that shouts me down
with its unintelligible alphabet.

I put my swollen thumb
under the tooth of knowledge,
and the stone speaks up
from the underworld of my thoughts:
You were always a black sheep
like all belonging to you,
hard words like grains of sand
in the corner of an eyelid
shut tight as an oyster.

When a blade of light
prises it open,
there's a tooth askew
in my son's mouth.
It shines like a pearl
in his perfectly crooked smile.
...
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