Snakeskin

Edie Popper

Time dissolves in cicada song: a bold bronze pulse,

             the pitch of heat. Shed shells of the dead still cling

                          to reeds as if they’d never leave. The way to

                          the waterfall is pockmarked rocks and water-

             holes. Rain has damped the clay road, grooved 

by tyres and time. Each groove has welled a pond

where froths of frog-eggs hug the waterline.

             Gluey translucent eyes wobble at the lip of clay

                         while older tadpoles whip their way around 

                         the small brown bay. Our truck teeth yesterday

            had missed the egg sac by an inch. We reach

the swimming hole. Hung from a branch above:

a teardrop weaved in moss, a bird’s nest strung from twined

             vine and lined inside with feathers—lost to fingers of

                         forest, fibrous and foraging for feasts: any dropped body

                         or excrement will do. A feather falls. Whirls in the

             windless copse where sun stumbles in the thickets. 

The water is cold as a moon’s shadow. The plunge

is quick. Later, we pluck leeches off each other’s feet,

             slip on our tops. Return to the cabin, a single wooden

                         tooth in the forest’s mouth. On the doorstep lies

                          a crumpled ribbon of fresh-shed python skin: two

             metres of speckled silk rolled from one end, reversed,

as if the snake had muscled from a peeled sock, the scaled

skin still soft, gauzy gossamer, no more than three or 

             four hours old. We awe for its delicacy, its tessellations. 

                         Talk about newness, joke about metaphor, but for the snake  

                         the skin was maybe little more than a scab to pick, 

             a clipped fingernail to flick, a sunburn to peel away.

Lilac drips up from the treeline into frayed grey clouds.

Salt and spice dissolve in stew on the stove inside. 

             This is the world: dewy in our lungs. This is the world 

                         at stake. When we seemed so resolved, for the sake of 

                         progress, of ever-updated tech, of cheap brief chic 

             and all-year imports of seasonal fruits, for the sake of

data storage, convenience plastics, child-mined metals

for these phones of endless instant answers

             that outmuscle our questions about it all—

                         this is the world we resolved to destroy.

This poem was written on unceded Biripi Country. I thank the Biripi elders past and present for their care for those lands and waters and I acknowledge the story-telling, knowledge-making and sustainable land management and living practises that have been cultivated on Country since time immemorial.

EDIE POPPER (they/them) is a nurse and emerging poet living and working on unceded Gadigal and Wangal Lands. They have read their poetry on community radio, local poetry shows and poetry slams. Their first publications are forthcoming in Australian Poetry Journal and Meniscus.