Keeping it real, a snake makes progress <br />through a desert of baked clay. She can <br />only imagine the flight of eagles, <br />the strength and faith of lions, by tasting the spoor <br />of Life in the grit of rocks <br />with her scissors-tongue. <br /> <br />The snake, who is lonesome, grows <br />tired of sand, hatches a brood of her own kind, <br />calls it ‘man', bites her tail, and changes into a river <br />of blood. - This red stream etherises. <br />Worlds die. Still burning, no one speaks, yet <br />people out themselves and enter the caves. <br /> <br />There are deep pools left from the deluge <br />of words in mountains: shelter <br />from heat, short passages to green <br />fields where everything edible is food <br />but anything written down is not bread. Again, <br />the sun in the heights waxes language, but the new air <br /> <br />tempers it with clouds, balancing drops <br />of spring water on the filaments of glass. A kind of <br />Serpent/lion/eagle-man sees Gods/ the Big Bang/the Apes/ <br />the Ancestor in smashed splinters of a mirror. In fact, <br />though, the snake's only daughter is a lamb.<br /><br />Jacqui Thewless<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/keeping-it-real-for-jessie/
