once sewing a patch on the sleeve of an old shirt
I saw you curled at my feet
later I found your hibernaculum
your family of gliding wonders
I learned how to freeze and listen
each unwinding coil an elongated whisper in the fescue
you and your sisters wove
down the slope around my sandals
black and yellow ribbons
flowing through parched grasses
oh you are well worth my panegyric
serpent god’s great glow-worm fit for constellations
advancing your loops in a swift weave
to knit up the raveled sleeve of the world
© David Carpenter
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Photo Credit:
Western garter snake, Thamnophis elegans. Photo by Todd Battery
Did you know ..
Female Western Garter Snakes give birth to live young, any time from July to September., rather than laying eggs. There may be as few as one or as many as two dozen tiny newborns in a litter, which almost immediately hurry off to take care of themselves.
Author: David Carpenter
David Carpenter began writing as a translator and reviewer in Winnipeg and Toronto. When he moved to Saskatchewan he attended a reading by the Moose Jaw Movement. From that moment on, he was determined to become a writer. He writes mostly short fiction and novels, but at the moment he is working a nonfiction book about wild carnivores. He lives and writes in Saskatoon.
More at www.dccarpenter.com