Brown Snake, North Lake
Somewhere close,
the part
secret of two
naughty boys
in gumboots
standing on small
tiger snakes’
heads
If you hadn’t
shouted
Stop, I wouldn’t
have
This one was
huge and brown
almost three
metres long, slick
umber body
languid across the path
As my eyes
measured the extent
from visible to
obscured, her body
hooked back on
itself, arcing
sharply to rise
above a shrub
Head, still as
stone, tongue
tickling air. A
question raised
at my daughter’s
fleshy thigh
clamped hard
around my waist.
My slackened
state shot through
again. Frozen
before another
mother, willing
my burden to be
still. Then, a
place behind my ribs
which might
conduct a hush
But more, the
wild impossibility