Month: March 2017

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas

A snake sought out my concrete floor on a warm, warm evening
And I in bare feet for the heat –
Mellifluously easing its smoothness under the door
Into the room I had presumed was mine
In order to put me right?

When my eyes told my mind what they saw at my feet
I must have drawn breath
for it stopped
And considered with penetrating emeralds
What it saw before it.

Having given myself away
I realised I was no longer part of the furniture
But uncomfortably distinct.

– Still! Be still! Don’t Move Stay Still
My thoughts hissed at me
– Even should it wind itself around your thigh

The glint of the remorseless eyes
Seemed to stop the world turning
Before the eternities that lay behind them

Then
Leaping clumsily like a human being,
Ignoring all time-honoured wisdoms,
I took a chair up with me
And landed back with a crash
Before its stillness.

Stiffening with each ensuing chair-crash
The creature magically pulled itself backwards
Betraying no fear, no widening at the eye –
It seemed, rather, to have taken
A pragmatic decision on its
Dry appraisal.

Perhaps it didn’t wish to be with what it appraised.
It slipped back indifferent garden-wards
And left me with sweaty palms
And something to expiate.

Dominic Mathews