Sunday, August 21, 2011

Blowsnake

This is from a dream, first poem in a while. A self-reminder that writing chops can deteriorate with lack of use. I mean it was tough to spit this one out.


Blowsnake




A chain-mailed Knight serves as the Blowsnake's eyes.
Together they patrol the crenellated circumference
of the tower; its massive squared stones, sealed by weight alone,
are a polished curved wall seamed as by a glass cutter's diamond.
The Blowsnake's retracted tongue bloats his collar,
flaring the skin in coils that step back from his head
like successive Triceratops' shields. They flow him forward
on pulsing waves which are words yet to be born.


At the Knight's trumpet blast the tongue disgorges
from the Blowsnake's body, slides between crenellations
and insinuates itself into the ocean-fed moat below.
There it tastes of the dried sap in the hulls of invading ships.
From the splashes made by their furrowing prows
the tongue whispers to the sailors of leafy boughs, and long roots
in the warm earth back home. They feel the folly
of risking the sharpened edges of the granite reef
which lays barely submerged, dead ahead.

No comments: