Resting her chin in patient contemplation

conscious, conscientious, not of metaphysics or morals 

but of scent trails, invisible highways

She has carefully chosen, selected, this

individual felled tree, windfall, not long

ago standing tall, reaching to the heavens

now prone, violently uprooted

Once, many moments ago, having burst through 

the soil to reach, straining upwards

growing in girth, in rings, in each season

its moments of life unfolding decades, now over

Now uprooted, lying still

violently wrenched by a spring tempest

swaying gracefully until the soil, saturated

could grip no longer with roots

slipping through tendrils, anchors, hands

and could no longer hold such weight, such

vertiginous striving stretching upwards and outwards through years aloft

Resting peacefully, nesting life will spring 

again, in time, in decay, in further forbearance

And the perfect velvety coil, ash gray, 

charcoal chevrons, rust red stripe tracing center

a spiral from nape of neck to jet black

terminating with sturdy keratin segments telling the broken

but continuous story of her seasons of 

growth, she is still, touching the 

freshly fallen once mighty now slumbering

oak. In no hurry her eyes perpetually open waking and sleeping

Having fallen, her headrest tore a hole in the

shading canopy; what once, the floor,

a patchwork of slowly shifting dappled

light now flooded, illumined in brightness; smaller

individuals, their own striving snapped, crushed

under the grey rough body 

the carpets of verdant life in their own

clinging rudely to the floor relocated

now horizontal

The light, the open, an invitation

for new striving, a new order

welcomes, beckons residents green bursting through the earth

and inhabitants fleet of mind and foot

Some have charted new paths from the 

shadows into, across, the light

some chestnut brown, striated black

ferrying treasure in cheeks, leaving 

invisible lines seen not with eyes

yet sensed, breathed by others scurrying

And by her. She, her forked black

tongue flickering, flicking, each

tine twisting tasting

she has searched

caterpillaring over leaf and stone

testing each log, now

here she knows these new trails

will be traveled again sooner, or

later, so she waits

The light shifts shadows dance in the

early morning across her rough

keels now brightness complete and dancing

again until darkness again and again

She shifts slowly almost imperceptively

  positioning coils to welcome warm rays

yet waiting for more fleeting heat

In a moment, one flashing second she sees

not with eyes a traveler passing the warmth

she has waited on, anticipated, now known

and in less than that (moment) her comfortable

coils in beautiful spiral are manifest: 

A spring! So still, so patient, so

stationary, statuesque, now dynamic, now lightening unsprung

unseen by the traveler but felt emphatically

a pair of hooks recurved extend, piercing

And she is still again

She knows, can taste, venom mixed with 

blood and so will wait until that

traveler soon rests

And then, unhurried and unharried

following that new trail, sporadic, desperate, winding

this way and that she

tastes the alchemy of stress and precious

venom, and heat

Finally the trail ends and she eats slowly

as in almost all her ways, in the 

confidence of enough for

her winter rest and next year

anticipating the life and hope of those to grow in her womb

The felled giant she has left behind keeps

resting long after her years are over

(but the not generations of her offspring)

falling even deeper it gives itself slowly to the others

living on, new life inviting, breaking through itself

They have all the time they need

giving and receiving growing and decaying

coming and going departing and arriving.

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