Snake Like Charms

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

of stepping away







SAVE BEELIAR WETLANDS














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Snake Like Charms

Snake Skin, Roe Swamp

Shedding skin of a snake, will

loosen first at the lips, retract

backward over bluing eyes

dull crown, those sorcerous jaws

Resistance is needed, seeking

friction of rock, chafe of grass

scour and scrub of brown balga

It braces its body and slides out

Slipped fishnet of bubblewrap

mingled with a streaky mandala

of divested paperbark, becomes

my discovery, being its past

I tease open a brittle end, puzzle

my arm inside, until it is sheathed

to the elbow, ghost eyes puckering

my skin. My pulse its unsealed centre

Vestiture of rain spittle in my hair

A cool trickle slides inside my collar

I tear the delicate mesh pulling it off

in what becomes a deluge

God of fragmentation, refusing

to keep things whole, coming

to me later. Showing again

that repetition might simply be

a lack of attention to detail








SAVE BEELIAR WETLANDS













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