The Poem within the Film, Pt. 5

Day five of the Five Day Poetry Challenge. Today, a poem you can watch! "The Border Between Human Heel and Serpent's Fang" appears in the Tropic Pictures film "A Well-proved Helpmate."

The link below carries you to the scene in the film where actor Mayo Purnell tells the audience a strange and haunting story, which is the narrative poem.

Link:
Clip from the film "A Well-proved Helpmate"

And here is he text:

BORDER BETWEEN HUMAN HEEL AND SERPENT'S FANG

Every little talk of philosophy

will go astray

with the appearance of a snake.

Even Bacchants

leave off ructions and capers

when slither takes the room.

Cannibalism in snakes

serves the mythic mind two images:

i.

The devouring cycle.

ii.

A careful hunter sighting prey

from an ingenious blind

has her concentration thunderstruck

by a visiting snake.

And a facile tap of her machete

puts its head spinning yonder—

a stone rolled away from a tomb

as out slips one devoured,

a reclaimed snake wriggling and taking over,

fangs beading in the sunlight.

And one time

I saw a bird pick a snake from the grass like a ribbon.

For lack of anything but an act of faith,

the snake struck the raptor and fell loose:

small in the distance—dark, twisting, alive —

falling through the blue . . . Then I lost it in the pines.