The Serpent Tamer

I can feel the snakes rattling from inside their beds in this earth
someone sees their mounded ridges forming a hesitation
a call to arms that only reaches our chest once it's too late for us
our notes plucking themselves to a business that makes us not our own
a sadness too far reaching and tight gripped that we cannot wrestle with it
dance, fall in love or sing to it like we should.
The snakes are mingling now, the din of secret selves
the soundboard of disaster in their tongues,
hissing and begging us to listen and feel them coming for us.
All our lives spent tossing and turning,
away from the feeling of this pain which they carry as a burden to their backs
to be kissed like a shot right through and into us,
and our feet still, planted firmly on this earth, their heaven
while superstitious familial stars break up stagnations in our own
personal skies.  We let our hands fall from their defences
our minds smile wide and our lives move onward and so forth...
A trickle down of triumph, momentary lapse of reason 
and the snakes keep their moving, their invisible hands never at rest
as they eat through the dirt, rock and sinew
and show us who we really could be, standing there under our shared 
idea of Heaven.

M. Lucia