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She (For Whom the Snake Coils)

Does danger dance to flutes played by your breath, 
emerge from basket’s depths to haunting tunes? 
It’s superstitious myth that weaving snake
can hypnotize and freezes victim’s feet
when cobra rises writhing like a fiend!

The woman is attracted, not to death
but life; divines snake charmers aren’t buffoons.
Snakes do not dance in time; their eyes track shake -
some hint of danger (or flute’s sway). Where’s feat
of mystic wisdom ancient shaman gleaned?

A thornless rose stares back from vase on ground;
slight nod suggests snake’s safe; bare hand slips in!
Snake’s skin feels rough, quite dry to touch (though scales
look wet); her gentle strokes provoke no hiss! 
Most snakes are shy, and few will launch attacks

(though cobras will defend their eggs!) Their backs
are where life’s mongoose strikes that ends snake’s bliss, 
ends slides through ‘Leaves of Grass’ (1) on nature’s trails.
Split tongues taste air: sweet rhyme considered win;
great metaphors quite rare but sometimes found!
 

Brian Johnston
13th of October in 2020
Poet’s Notes: 
(1) Walt Whitman’s book’s title, “Leaves of Grass,” suggests
a hidden modesty. “Leaves” refers to pages in a book
and “grass” is a word used by some as a label to describe
the work of an immature or less gifted poet.

My poem was inspired by and written for a woman friend
from college days, Michaelyn Shelly-David, who had an
unforgettable encounter with a snake charmer’s cobra
on a recent trip to India. She told me she experienced an
in-depth, intimate connection to this potentially deadly
snake as a living entity that shares our world.

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