the green grove a magnet to my eye
on these sun baked plains
I enter the glade to take shade with the cicadas
and vampire mosquitos
then I see it, Eden’s villain, coiled and rattling,
red ready to strike
I raise my staff, I too programmed to survive, do to what millennia
have taught
still we are in this staring standoff—silent save its rattle, deaf
I am to the chorus of insects
neither of us moves for an eternity of seconds, until the snake lunges at my feet
where its fangs find a field mouse, and devour it while I watch, an unwitting witness to expiry other than my own
I leave the copse, whole, content another creature has, for today, taken my place in the bloodletting
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC
the green grove a magnet to my eye
on these sun baked plains
I enter the glade to take shade with the cicadas
and vampire mosquitos
then I see it, Eden’s villain, coiled and rattling,
red ready to strike
I raise my staff, I too programmed to survive, do to what millennia
have taught
still we are in this staring standoff—silent save its rattle, deaf
I am to the chorus of insects
neither of us moves for an eternity of seconds, until the snake lunges at my feet
where its fangs find a field mouse, and devour it while I watch, an unwitting witness to expiry other than my own
I leave the copse, whole, content another creature has, for today, taken my place in the bloodletting
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