Prelude to Saplings

Dry carpet crunch
of tongue frenzied mulch
awakened by neckless serpents
their eyes gouged
by mother nature’s melon ballers

I follow the trail of blood
to a rabbit den
where a mother sits in mourning
her shivering shoulder draped with coconut husks

The arch-serpent wears the egg of his child
like the helmet of an antique warrior
and he does not smile over his spoils
He does not enjoy his meal

Imagine the outline of a deer
shrouded in python skin

Such is the man
eats with stomach alone

As for me
I retreat to my snakeless home

The mother rabbit
quakes in her quaint hovel
She knows the serpent is similar
to her ways of the springtime traipse:
A contest of love
from who’s born
shall reign in time
and lord it over the mulch and leaf litter
to the bitterness learn of such high station
Fortune feckless and frail as dead palm branches

Yet love we we love
until love unspendable’s spent
and our breathing is that which moves
the many heavenly bodies on their wide circuits
Yes, Saturn dances only for the heaves
of some young fox sewing the reaping of his orchard

As sin is its own consequence
so is love its own reward