Going to Sleep with Snakes in the Grass in the Year of the Fire Rooster
They coil at night
and they grow at night.
Fine tendrils follow scales
and wrap and wrap
around bedposts
and fingers and toes
and in and out
nasal cavities—
winding into the mind and finding
old haunted pathways.
With their smart tails
they dig the ditches deeper
and between the old stoves
and rusted coffee cans
and scraggily arms of crabapple blossoms,
they toss in moldy albums of absurdity,
sticky tapestries of terror,
and spinning wheels
still spinning spools and spools
of thread and web.
In the storm of the night
follow the rope
from the house to the barn
to the thickest of oak branches.
Follow the rope as it snaps
and splinters
across oceans
into a thousand rivers.
Follow the red thread
from the spool
to the bobbin
to the barricades.
The rooster boasted,
the alarm sounded—
and from the Rose Garden
it was promised
[stanza break]
the sun would rise.
And so each morning
we line up
and wonder and whisper
if the fiery orb
coming up through the trees
is the sun
or the end.
We hold hands,
red strings tightly wound
around each finger,
reminding us
that the clock
is being moved
both backward
and forward.
featured in “Encounters: How the Light Gets In,” a poetry & art collaborative exhibit, ArtWorks Loveland, 2017. Art by Jennifer Ivanovic and Chloé Leisure
