Camels here are all nose, teeth,
knees and attitude.
They walk as if taught
to do it in a world far from here,
a world where walking
is the point of living
and eyelashes for no good reason
are elaborate reedy shades
over eyes of dark liquid knowledge.
Over and over their half-inflated feet
come down
soft and inquiring upon the sand.
You would choose such a creature
if you could
to deliver a gift.
Snakes here can be brown and thin
keeping to the warm concrete paths
of hotel resorts where they test
the fit beneath each door
and slide along walls
all alertness and anxiety
over our awkward feet
that fall without feeling the way
at all.
We leaned over the snake
and Jill said how lucky she was
to at last be given the gift of looking
down on a living snake.
I very much like the way the poem moves from the ordinary tasks of the camels to the frightening scene of the hotel snakes.
ReplyDeleteI am unsure what these two lines mean:
that fall without feeling the way
at all.