Month: May 2017

Super Shorts

A tiny poem…for your listening pleasure

The ant hills were a bit flattened by the time I thought to snap a photo.

AND….

a piece of “micro-fiction” from a prompt about an idea lighting on the mind like a butterfly… for the Peninsula Writers Group spring newsletter. This is a little different from my usual style…

Cecil and Eileen Go Camping

The idea fluttered by, and by again, finally lighting on her mind for a nano-second, before fluttering off once again. The second time, the spark at the synapse was a  stronger blip. This time she could see the butterfly for a micro-second. It was an Eastern Black Swallowtail. Eileen had trained her intuitive mind to show her a specific series of butterflies when a new idea was forming. There was nothing she could do about it but wait, until the Red Admiral and Painted Lady had come and gone. When the Mourning Cloak showed up, the idea was ready for daylight.

 

“That’s crazy!” Cecil said, his lips split in a wide grin. “I’ll help.”

 

***

 

Eileen emerged naked from the tent, followed by Cecil, in the same condition, for moral support. He turned, reached back into the tent opening, and pulled out a paint brush and the jar of bait.

 

Eileen’s breathing quickened a little as Cecil opened the jar, and then more as he dipped his brush and started painting her.

 

The buzz of giant wasps could be heard from afar. Eileen’s breathing steadied. The wasps arrived. Eileen opened her arms and welcomed the sting. Soon the nightly pains would be over. The kindness of the anesthetic paralyzer acted quickly. The atoms which had combined their essences to be Eileen would soon disperse into millions of wasp larvae, some of whom would become bird shit, and others of whom would wing their way around the world.

 

Cecil didn’t know if Eileen could still hear him, but he stayed, and played his guitar for her. He sang her songs. He watched over her, until the larvae hatched, ten days later. Then he drove down the highway, to home.

 

Friend of the Cobra

HEAR THE POEM READ ALOUD….

For whom does this chimera pipe his silent tune?
The cobra, whose neck he so calmly holds with his left hand?
Or for me, the current audience?

Bronze Snake Charmer Figurine from India

In what key does he play?
Is it a traditional tune?
Or something a little more sexy?

I bought this copper casting at the government store in Mahabalipuram.
The agent said tribal people made these figurines, and this one was probably three hundred years old.
“The people of the younger generation
don’t care about their ancestors’ art.
They’d rather have the money.”
Sadness and uncertainty lurk in my mind.
I too have lost many of my parents’ customs.

On arriving home, I ask my new friend
“Who are you?”
I discover that his pipe,
with a mid-length bulge,
pours forth music, not smoke.

Charmer’s features look African.
Charmer’s bracelets and necklaces
call “Royalty!” and “Ancient Near East.”
But the cobra itself and the exotic flute cry “India! India!”

The melody reaches my ears after all!
That’s must be why I knew he was coming home with me
the minute
I saw him.

***

Now, it’s only the cast copper charmer’s chant that soothes the cobra.
The human snake charmers in India have been silenced by people
who find it cruel to keep a snake in a basket and make it dance on demand.
As if the cobra doesn’t have a way to make known its own displeasure.

***

Whose mind does the charmer’s melody mollify?
Could the eternal enemy become a friend?
Millions of years ago, our primate predecessors
had already made up a word for
“enemy from below,” and it was “snake.”

But wait! What about the viper in The Little Prince?
Or the Snake in the Garden of Eden?
Charmed, Snake refrained from striking
beautiful Eve, and taught her to
exercise free will, a very difficult task,
efficiently carried out, in a dialogue
only a few sentences long.
A doctorate in Psychology, in a minute.
A gift for a lifetime of life-lines.

The END!

But wait! My Pakistani friend says that there are still live snake charmers in Karachi!