Snake Island
Stones and bones hide memories: July’s Prose Poem Prompt
Over 147,000 snakes on Snake Island, they said.
I wish I’d paid attention before stepping on it. Was it a boat that took us there?
Or maybe only a bridge?
All memories have been expunged by that family of six, dancing in the sun in a magical weave, rising up to the tips of their tails, their undulations marking the highs and lows of a symphony that only pure art can render without a sound.
It’s been decades, but that wall of swinging snakes intertwined as one, six heads, four smaller, played a lullaby of things past, a future grounded, a solid reminder of all beings as life, of beliefs as aerial as imagination.
Snakes crawling over my feet, some climbing my legs, oh how I would have screamed! I didn’t dare move, because I would have interrupted that silent surreal music only interlaced dancing snakes can make.
A camera would have been an extravagance too big to even dream of, but the eyes’ lens of the student with holes in her shoes proved more precious than all cameras in the world.
I wonder if the snakes are dancing still, deaf to the bombs, immune to war, swaying their ancestral peace for as long as the world shall live…
