There’s a serpent in my head
growing wings.
How can I learn the grammar
of the serpent?
The pronouns, the particles, the
coiling syntax.
The language of the imaginary
reading
out from the centre
of the spiral—
The grammar of the
serpent language.
But the language of the serpent
is silent still.
Notes
This is an old poem, written sometime in the early 1990s. I have a long fascination with snakes and the photo below was one I saw last week. It is a Jungle Carpet Python (Morelia spilota cheynei) and was slowly crossing the road near where I live. It is non-venomous.
I remember learning about carpet snakes at school. I learned that they lived in Queensland, in the tropics, where I now live. The colouring is beautiful and the yellow markings on this snake were much brighter than they appear in the photo.
My quest continues looking for friendly snakes. The snake you might wind around your arms as in the snake goddess sculptures of Crete and elsewhere.
The poem is from my book Bird and other writings on epilepsy (1993).