Member Poem

Intent as the Serpent in the park,
psyched up for a meandrous ramble,
we kick off at the triple twirling
tail of the titan, forever hurling 
itself at a critter too slow to scramble
away from jaws as old as this hill

smelling of clay and chlorophyll.
Like Draco of the firmament
but curvier and more divine,
this huge ophidian could dine  
on a proboscidian. It’s bent
on seizing the sun! Now, as we weave

along its doglegs, we perceive
tendrils of magnetism, a tune
drawing us back to those days when it battled
with ice and flood and drought, and rattled
the sky to return the heat of June,
to green the hilltop and the hollow.

The lithe and dangerous beast we follow
keeps taciturn about the reasons
for its being. Above the creak,
atop this high plateau, the sleek
figure—which once had marked the seasons,
served as a compass, a ritual site

and talked of the wheeling worlds of night—
now slithers toward its destination.
Cramming the sun into its throat,
tail thrumming in glee (no antidote!),
it swallows the O of all creation
as we are swallowed by primal dark.