Tuesday Poem: Swallowed your Tongue?

A      s

i    f

I

h

a

v e 

n ’t

got  

enough

 to think about, 

there's a silver

python curled 

up in the 

chicken 

coop. It's 

eaten two 

of the 

chicks. As

I write, they're 

in there being digested, the

                          small bulges with sharp points for the tiny beaks.

       I think the python is the same one             

we caught swallowing

Bruce the Rooster.

At least the

old rooter 

fought back. 

To just up

and go, to 

slide down 

the world's

throat with-

out a sound. 

Was there 

nothing you

had to say to

me? Noth-

ing to ask? 

To plead?

This time 

I called the

 snake man and he’s

on his way. To be honest,

     I’d rather smash the bloody thing

                with a spade and spread its silvery entrails 

                                under the avocado trees. But the snake man won't

            have it (and I can’t be sure it's all 

that easy to kill.) He

says he'll hold onto

the python until 

it's digested 

its dinner

and then 

let it go up

country. 

Odd place

 Australia: 

 far too 

m a n y 

snakes and

 not enough

 rain. I  miss

the bush.

I miss

sss

ss

u.

 Mary McCallum

As told to me once by a friend with a chicken coop. 


Photo by Dermal Denticles (photostream on Flickr). 

For more Tuesday Poems click on the quill in the sidebar. Yesterday's post here looks at The Best of the Best NZ Poems (VUP) -  a new book just out.