the snake’s mouth again

Sunshine gilds my afternoon,
I hear soft susserations from the trees.
Open windows, just right breeze.
I am fondling soil between my fingers
digging gently at the edges with a
blade whose edge has long since gone,
feeling for moisture, taking death,
tossing fragments outside to turn
the end into the snake’s mouth again.

I pick a coil of shaped wood, small beads...
India in my hand again. Beach sand
between my toes, briefly, in the sprint
across blazing heat to the cool relief
of the wide ocean skimmed by flying fish.

These beads, these memories lie
coiled, foetally fatally fatefully
amid the warm tones of a wooden bowl
turned upon a halfway lathe in Lancashire,
neither at ground nor above, suspended twixt.

Did I make this? No,
my Father, maker of beautiful things,
like
my Mother, maker of beautiful things.
I am one of them.
That’s cool.



​

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July 5 2023