I Wish I'd Written This

Your Ground

  

Its tongue

is the only thing moving

A striking distance

from your face

Sharp arc of snake

head flared with venom

A totemic weight

posted darkly in

suddenness of

grizzled air between you

Your body in mirrored freeze

still on your knees

swiveled from a lizard

you were attempting to capture

on a fistful of phone

Your jaws both clamped

over a rising silence

Wind is a litany of hiss

through grass and it arrives

at your eyeballs and the blink

brings release

snake melts toward the earth

its wilding light

shines and slides

A spilled surface of black

slick on the grit

The anthropologist

you were walking with

is bounding up behind you

and again the snake rears

yellow belly showing no fear

withers into twisting away

through underscrub

like an escape but slower

The luminous trance stays

for more than months

(you still can't remember

standing)

The psychologist says

your ego died (for

a few unsplit seconds)

Your friend, an elder

from Broome explains the snake

is your guardian

painting its likeness in repose

on bark you once fed a red
tailed cockatoo from

You hang it above

your writing desk

 And for a while

it all makes sense

The brute matter

how dangerous you are

how safe

the circuitous journey

Then one morning you get it~

That paired wisdom

 your bodies made

Snake says

Be still

Stand your ground

It’s the only protection

we have

– Amanda Joy

I first met Western Australian poet Amanda Joy ten or so years ago on MySpace, where we were both among the numerous poets there, many of whom managed to connect and interact, forming a sort of loose international community of poets. (Now a lot of us are on facebook instead, though that doesn’t work in quite the same way.)  It was a delightful forerunner of more organised online poetic communities such as Poets United.

She lives on the outskirts of Fremantle, Western Australia and is the author of two chapbooks, Not Enough To Fold (Verve Bath Press 2008) and Orchid Poems (Mulla Mulla Press 2001) 'Almost Pause/Pareidolia' was highly commended for the 2013 Blake Poetry Prize. Her poem ‘Tailings’ won the 2016 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. 

Amanda and I have never met in person, as Western Australia is a long distance from the east coast where I live, but I’ve always loved and admired her work and was thrilled to discover her first full-length book in my local library recently. It’s published by UWAP (University of Western Australia Press) and is called Snake Like Charms – well named. The poems are extraordinary and varied, with a magical/mythical flavour about the whole book.

The landscapes she writes of in this book are very recognisably Australian: a thing which pleases this little Aussie, and no doubt many others. It’s good to have one’s home reflected back to one.

She says that her favourite bio-line comes from (Sydney poet) Robert Adamson, who described her as a “poet alive with the wonder of her vision”. The poem I’ve chosen to share with you here is certainly very alive and immediate. (And what a clever way to make it a shape poem, a snake-shape, by aligning right.)

Australian snakes are mostly venomous. Having had some close encounters myself – though not as close as the one described – I can certainly relate to the experience, and know that freezing is the first and best response. (Then, as in the poem, one or both parties move away from the mutual threat.) At the same time, I think snakes are beautiful beings, and have been told that Snake is one of my guardians too.

Though there are echoes of my own experiences, the wisdom arrived at in the conclusion is all Amanda’s own, albeit conveyed by the snake – and what great wisdom it is. Something to remember in troubled times … and at all times.

She was patron of the 2017 Perth Poetry Festival last month, and her Keynote Address can be read online. In it, she has thought-provoking things to say about poetic language – inspired by and expanding on the ideas of Fay Zwicky, whom I featured here recently in The Living Dead. She goes on to quote wonderful poems by Zwicky and others.

A woman of parts, she is also described in various places online as visual artist, sculptor, installation artist and songwriter.

You can find more of her poems at Poetry Foundation, Rochford Street Review, and at her (discontinued but still accessible) blog, Little Glass Pen.

Her chapbook Orchid Poems, is still available from mulla mulla press.

Snake Like Charms is available from UWAP.

Material shared in 'I Wish I'd Written This' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.