An Amanda Joy Poem

Your Ground

Its tongue

is the only thing moving

A striking distance

from your face

Sharp arc of snake

head flared with venom

A totemic weight

posted darkly in

suddenness of

grizzled air between you

Your body in mirrored freeze

still on your knees

swiveled from a lizard

you were attempting to capture

on a fistful of phone

Your jaws both clamped

over a rising silence

Wind is a litany of hiss

through grass and it arrives

at your eyeballs and the blink

brings release

snake melts toward the earth

its wilding light

shines and slides

A spilled surface of black

slick on the grit

The anthropologist

you were walking with

is bounding up behind you

and again the snake rears

yellow belly showing no fear

withers into twisting away

through underscrub

like an escape but slower

The luminous trance stays

for more than months

(you still cant remember

standing)

The psychologist says

your ego died (for

a few unsplit seconds)

Your friend, an elder

from Broome explains the snake

is your guardian

painting its likeness in repose

on bark you once fed a red

tailed cockatoo from

You hang it above

your writing desk

And for a while

it all makes sense

The brute matter

how dangerous you are

how safe

the circuitous journey

Then one morning you get it~

That paired wisdom

your bodies made

Snake says

Be still

Stand your ground

It’s the only protection

we have

(2017)