The Head of the Cottonmouth

Why would I abandon the hunger-suffering 

Vulture, spread-winged in the middle of the road

Eating a rabbit while it snows? Wouldn’t you

Want to touch, watch his comrades close down the sky

And, in a black circle, eat red on the white Earth?

And when the hiss of something slithers in—

Panic un-paused—wouldn’t you watch the circle 

Break into black leaves pulled from the earth and flung

Into the falling sky? Wouldn’t you want to be

A servant of this paradise, not a God

In front of a screen, naked, lonely, asking—

No more a God than the crown of vultures

Frightened by a hiss that was a tire deflating?

Why would you trade Paradise for an argument

                                                            About Paradise?

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“This poem is part of a longer series of poems called ‘The Head of the Cottonmouth’ and ‘The Cottonmouth’s Head.’ The series started with an incident with a cottonmouth in Arkansas and the ritual of cutting off its head and burying it far away from the body. I began to think of this sort of ritual in relationship to other rituals around fear, cleanliness, disease, and the pandemic. The pandemic caused many of us to retreat behind our screens and seek validation there, distancing us from others as well as ourselves. This poem asks us to come back to ourselves, to our finitude, to our hungers.”
—Roger Reeves