Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth,
And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
I wish I'd been that much more willin'
When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin'.
When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My Mother, she told me no end,
"If you got a tooth, you got a friend"
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-
Didn't seem worth the time... I could bite!
If I'd known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fiIlin's
Injections and drillin's
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lay in the old dentist's chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgum," he'll say, "for in there."
How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin'
It's me they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth. Pam Ayres
Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth
Favourite Poems 5
Gratuitously beautiful,
Utterly free.
Look! Look! There! A broken heart mending...
And there, two soft mouths blending...
And a great man bending
To the young lambs he's tending,
Treading their pearly sea...
Look! Rippling six-
Of muscular angels
And the vapouring, tapering
Wings of that heavenly host...
And a bare, blue bay
Bursting breakers
On a foam-
Of shimmering, salt-
High as satellites...
And dropping stalactite-
And dimples of a new-
Swathed in snow-
Bathed in shifting sun and crystal...
Ah... Look...
Lie on your back on this hill
On a sunny windy day
And lie and fill yourself
And watch God play.
See! See! The twinkle and crinkle,
Icicle high,
Of tumbling sunny bundles
Shouting a silent, shifting, vast
"I LOVE YOU"
Across your sky.
Lucy Berry
Clouds
