To my 87 year-old mother on losing a tooth

Now you have a pirate’s look,

at times a pirate’s laugh as well,

a high seas dry and salty cackle.

Perhaps I should get you a three cornered hat,

an old grey parrot with a line in cynical aphorisms,

baggy pants and a sword shaped like a young moon,

so you can travel in a frigate of dreams to a land  

where the ground laughs when the gods tell good jokes.