I laughed, Max, at truth/ tooth, which I presume I was meant to. Do you need the parentheses in stanza the third? And 'baring', 'bared' in stanza two?
My manly father presented me one Christmas with an electric tooth brush. What am I to make of that? I used it twice and cupboarded it. He still asks after it.
Bill
> On 20 Aug 2014, at 10:29 pm, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Back when hard-bristle toothbrushes
> seemed manly,
> a very senior dentist said to me:
> keep up that brisk brushing
> you’ll be pushing
>
> back your gums, baring
> your teeth so you look like
> an aging bulldog. He bared
> his teeth in a fierce grin,
> a snarl that scared.
>
> Young then, I made a mental
> note and changed my dental
> hygiene (without ever flossing
> much, a point no-one
> was much stressing).
>
> Old now, lucky to be
> here, my bathroom mirror
> image grins back at me,
> gratified, in truth,
> to be so long in the tooth.
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