A meandering river it is not
A leathering root no, it is not
A born liar coiled around itself
A hole waiting to be filled
Pulsing thread in the needle's eye
Platelocked skin that slithers
Silently over itself - oiled and primed
Greenbrown smoke writhing
Over the field. To bite, choke
Only hair and tooth remain
I caught one once in a farmer’s field
With the loose net of my eyes
It slipped through the strands
And slank into the lower dark
Where its smaller prey waits
Two long teeth scything the chaff
From the slow and drowsy fat
Licking voleheart and bone bare
Eye more cold than the bloody stare
Of a dead queen in the childhood mirror
So treelike in your dance
Less than hypnotic; a loose stillness
That tenses to the tell of a quiver
And launches taut, the poison arrow
Locked till the touch and snap
Adam in the garden may of simply mistook
You for a branch of his own desire
But you do, you do educate, trunk
Of knowledge in your gnarled coils:
Viperine branch - internal words
'Tread Warily' you seem to say
'Tread Warily' you seem to say
Body of rope that curls and winds
Biting tail, pulling hard and unleashed
Set the world to wildly spin
A joiner of dots constellating
From hole to thicket to hole
