Dharma Transmission

mall snake
on the gravel road
near the end of August.
this year's crop.
asleep, I said,
till I saw the right eye
glazed over,
the left still clear.
ridden over freshly
by a sightless wheel,
but nothing red
was hanging out.

Len DeLozier

Len DeLozier

I carried it away gently —
the way I carried
squirming creek creatures
home in mason jars
when I was ten —
a procession, if you could see it,
for I do this often —
and sat with it a while
on the rough wood deck
by the forest edge.

I held the snake
in my open hands
and read the lifelines
curving along its 9-inch length.
green, like the grass
where it hunted worms,
and slept, warm in the sun,
and black in between.

it felt sacred, precious,
so much of earth.
its scales.
its coolness.
and imagine in your body
how it is to move lengthwise
along your spine
without hands or feet
and not give up.

I loved it wholly
for those few moments.
I wonder if it knew?

it was neither awake, asleep, nor dead.
no darting tongue
no movement in its lidless eyes
no twitching tail
no rising falling rising ribs
no wriggle to escape.

as I grew still within,
attuned to the mystery
whispering in my hand,
I could feel the tidal current
drain out
along its spine
in such a tiny way
and taste the salt sea
of our ancestral home.

I laid it
by the trunk
of a hemlock
in the garden.
its spirit rode the breeze,
its body held by the shaded earth
it crawled from
a lifetime ago,
in spring.

the snake was gone next day.
perhaps a strong-winged raven
black as night
danced up to it sideways,
pecked to see if it was dead,
and flew with it beyond the fence.

or a burly pair of garter snakes
hauled it by the chakras
to line another nest,
the way ants
with all their might
drag off backwards
the bits and pieces
of fallen kin.

or the white and yellow feral cat
that lives next door,
highstepping through the wet morning grass,
carried it devotedly
between its teeth
back into the wild.

we're all hand-me-downs
and pass-me-ons
till nothing lonely's left,
and every being or thing
however small
that's ever lived or will,
floats free and incandescent
in the breathing sky sea
of a summer night,
dark as a snake's velvet back.
deep.
vast.
awash with light.

Len DeLozier
Quadra Island, B.C.
1997
pulished by Amida Trust