Apollonius on Snakes

Weave golden letters

onto a crimson cloth.

It can’t resist

its golden scales

sound like bronze

beneath the earth.

The unprefigurable beast

can’t resist

it reads

and falls asleep

the bearded head

oddly heavy in the

palm of your hand.

Nothing is innocent.

With axes and spells

they chop off its head.

They take the eyes.

The eyes that will never

cease to scan from the

crest of wake and sleep,

hard as jewels

some say

with the power of the ring

of Gyges. Invisible body

from which they trek

across the letters

in the Indian’s palm

the mill of skies

the letters that throng

in conclusive rain

the streets of dawn

its wise denizens.

They’ve given up

building and just live in it

now. Study all their strange work

by the luscious measure of 

themselves. This the snake

reads, its eyes the door

the missing beat

that have an 

“irresistible power”

for there is no teacher

and no listener

no subject,

no content.

You can sing

on your long guitar

of mountain goats

and its endless skin

of skies like sandpaper

in a wallless room.

The eyes awake

its missing body.

When you can hardly 

stand amid the animals

crowding around

the boundary stone.

It’s body awakes.

A release

in the guts 

of the mind.