[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://pandebare.wordpress.com/wp-co..." data-large-file="https://pandebare.wordpress.com/wp-co..." src="https://pandebare.wordpress.com/wp-co..." alt="" class="wp-image-1530" />Photo by Ivan Rojas on Pexels.com

Although he didn’t know what they were
at the time – mere cakes to hungry eyes –
beside a broken bridge, the boy stood still
patiently awaiting the Godhead’s pills.
Popping a handful in his waiting mouth,
he immediately felt the lonely
sting of immortality crush his soul.
That’s when the serpent awakened below…

Through murky depths, she gazed upon the sky
from behind her scaled eyes and somehow knew
she’d loved that boy in a heaven before
this world or time had even existed.
Like a baby bird’s returning mother,
the boy spilled those pills back in the water.
The serpent, a Taoist herself, swallowed
every last drop of what was given up.
The little boy vanished in a purple
puff of peyote smoke, and the serpent
ascended to the bridge where she transformed
to what she’d always known herself to be
– the goddess who she was on the inside –
recognized a fellow snake’s suffering
being sawed in half to have her belly
devoured by some mortal’s ministry.

With her forked tongue’s hiss, the goddess ended
this sacrifice. Sunlight shimmered through the
morning air reflecting off the dappled
flesh of the virgin snake’s battered, bruised scales.
Rough scales morphed into a woman’s soft skin,
and the new acolyte swore eternal
faith to the deity who had rescued
her from the hungry jaws of mankind’s hell.

“Year of the Snake” poem from the Zodiac Cycle, featured in my poetry collection, We Are the Underground.