The day after

On being eaten by a snake

Knowing they are not poisonous
I kneel on the path to watch it
between poppies, by a crown of nasturtiums,
the grey-stripe body almost half as long
as my own body, the formless black head
rearing, swaying, the wide black lips seeming
to smile at me. And I see
that the head is not a head,
the slit I have seen as mouth
is not a mouth, the frilled black under-lips
not lips, but another creature dying: I see
how the snake's own head is narrow and delicate,
how it slides its mouth up and then back
with love, stretched to thin shapelessness
as if with love, the sun stroking
the slug's wet skin as it hangs