Generation of Vipers

This is a beautiful earth
Covered with riches, waters warm and icy,
Leaves, moss, the dank mulch of dying matter,
And the soft light of spring.

One cannot love such a thing,
One cannot own it.
Still, just outside my door
There is an asphalt drive
Sprinkled with gravel, and wet.

One cannot ignore such a thing-
One cannot dismiss it
By making a spectacle of oneself,
Eating weeds and going around naked
Like a Tibetan poet.

With such behavior in the United States of America,
The vipers put you into a snake pit
(But there are no snakes in a mental hospital -
Nothing lives there).

Now, finally, I confront them,
The earthly beings who crawl and slither,
Making the planet itself a pit of snakes.
I did not label them before-
I wanted to be a snake.

Now I am a rattlesnake,
Rearing my head to address
The squirming clusters of reptiles,
But still I am not one of them,
Those puny little vipers that hiss and strike
With their inadequate poison.
Do they ever grow?

They recoil when I rattle;
I maintain my coil and hide my fangs
And only raise my head when I must.
We are all snakes, after all,
Touching the earth with our bellies.

It is so warm, this soil,
So black and palpable.
I rest on the flat ground
And feel my cold blood dance in the sun.

I want no prey.
I only want to live with vipers.

- Sally Clay
March 12, 1989
Year of the Earth Snake

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