Blood Waves

Heated by sun and rock a mottled snake licks the morning air. Last night, stones were its eyes, a blood-chill had frozen the flavor and flicker of tongue and taste. The daylight is already sun-crushed, heavily it crumbles, dry churning a scant green to withered acres, grinding all beneath its hermetic heel. A rabbit runs a racetrack behind its eyes, long whiskers sightlessly search reaching far from their hidden hollow, its brown pelt dreamily brushes over a rounding horizon. Snake uncoils, breaking boulders of blood between warming bones. A cage of hoops unlocks a hunger. A blushed mouth is snugged around translucent fangs, bodkins that smell out all small-pawed scrabbling’s. Rabit ears twitch as eyes leap awake, it hears the serpents lithe unhinging, senses its scaled unclasping. An immediate pulse quickens, vibrant tendons of awareness animate joy and fear. On the quiet breath, visions of life or death arise as speculative ghosts. Now the sky must record while the earth forgets.