Daniel Snethen Returns Once More

Tonight, at long last, I would like to post more pieces by Daniel Snethen.  I love how he writes about nature!

Mud-Dragon

Moss-back marauder.

Aquatic terror of pond 

and slow moving stream.

Melon-mouthed.

Elastic neck

on a ripcord,

and steely-toed claws,

ready to rip and rend 

frog-flesh  and fish-fauna.

Reduced primitive plastron

of primordial paleontological origination

with spiked tail

and leeches latched onto its carapace,

all a part of its camouflage,

as it stalks its prey 

through the mucky bottoms,

disguised by all things 

ugly and horrible.

Browny

A child watched

as the cows went to their milking stanchions.

Creamy,

Star,

Ada the Ayrshire,

and finally Maple.

Big Brother balanced on a wooden T-stool

tugging at Star’s milking handles.

Sounds of Holstein milk whispered off the galvanized metal milk pail.

Creamy, standing in the stall next to Star, munched her ground oats.

Dad sat on a feed bucket and emptied Ada’s bag.

Ada was Dad’s cow: his favorite cow

                                                —and he spoiled her.

Cats sat on the dirt barn floor

waiting, anticipating the filling of the milk pan.

They would fight over the milk,

not by clawing and biting,

but by shoving and snarling

until one of them ended in the center of the pan

                                                                 —bathed in sticky white milk.

Sometimes Big Brother would squirt a thin stream of milk

at a cat—into its large gaping mouth

giving the feline a small appetizer.

Mom milked Maple—or Browny as the child called her.

Browny was a Brown Swiss bovine

                                                                —and the child loved her.

She ate feed from his tiny hand,

letting him scratch her neck,

while she switched her tail,

mooing appreciatively.

Often the lad gave her an ear of corn.

Browny wrapped her long fleshy tongue around the cob

leaving slobbers on the boy’s hand.

But, he didn’t care; he loved her

                                                                —and she loved him.

The child watched the cows for many years.

Each day they would march to individual stalls.

Every year calves were born and nursed

and when they were grown, they were sold.

One year, Browny’s bag swelled up.

Her teats were hard and lumpy and it pained her to be milked.

Her calf had to be bottle-fed or starve.

The bus dropped the child off.

School had been fun,

but this was a sad day.

“Mom, where’s Browny?”

“Dad sold her.”

“Dad, you sold her?

You didn’t tell me you were going to sell her.

You waited until I was at school.

Why didn’t you tell me

                                                                —why’d you sell Browny.”

“I had to sell her.

I didn’t want to

                                                                —but she had mastitis.”

Danny sobbed.

Truth

A blind woman, named Truth,

thrust her hand into a galvanized 

bucket of maggots and laughed, 

because their movements tickled.

She fondled the slinking s-curve

of a hissing serpent and said,

“how incredibly sexy.”

She felt the glowing

stove top burner and thought

it looked very hot.

Then the most handsome man

in the hemisphere asked her

to read his chiseled face.

And when she touched him,

her hands quickly withdrew

because it hurt her so,

and her eye-less sockets

wept tears because

he was horribly ugly.

To the Girl in the Brown Corduroy Pants

A vernal rain which ushered freshness into

my life now leaves me completely

enveloped in the shadow of wintry darkness

listlessly descending upon me as

I struggle against the aching of a heart

emptied of wine filled instead with yellow bile.

And if you’d realized my jubilance of having first 

met the girl in the brown corduroy pants,

eventually you would have known

love like none has ever known love. Instead you left me 

in abysmal loneliness which beckoned me like the

ebony-cloaked figure of that bastard Death and his bony finger.

Ah yes, there were many things I wanted us to do,

many things I wanted to show you.

Especially, I wanted to destroy you 

and your wooden red Miss Scarlet token,

in the library with the candlestick—and you, 

in your brown corduroy pants, would admit defeat

to the prowess of my Professorial plum-purple token.

.

And I wanted us to catch on a moonless night

multicolored moths winging their way across an African veldt

even as we followed migrating gnu

lugubriously in the wake of watching crocodiles 

intent on maiming and killing and feasting upon

every last living wildebeest of the African veldt.

And I still miss you, and my heart still aches, and

my eyes keep vigil, ever watching,

ever searching for that Oregonian girl to return

like vernal rains, ushering in freshness

in her brown corduroy pants never

ever to leave me again!

TANKA

spring  rains beckon

burgundy striped clown beetles

caked in hardened mud

standing statuesque, heads down

with uplifted abdomens

Fly-Repellent

                …zoologists now believe that the zebra’s stripes are less a function of camouflage and serve more as a function of disorienting tabanid flies –inhibiting them from landing on and biting the zebra.

Hypnotic black, white—

mesmerizing

piebald stripes.

Zebra

hide.

TANKA

the honeybee stings

eviscerating itself

protecting her hive

mother clinging to scissors

Father’s pugilistic fists

Lunar Eclipse

engorged blood orange moon

eroded by

Earth’s shadow

blocking

Sol

Now let's add some music.

Recently Randy Weston died, so I'd like to start with his "Blue Moses," featuring Pharaoh Sanders:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeC68qpIq6s

"The Healers" is from the same 1990s album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyI8peWYhNM

I'll follow with his "In Memory Of," featuring the trombonist Melba Liston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZdO_8KcZRk&list=PL0RAck7NiovYFvg1mhB6Fb0Sq2Wj2

H898

Let's finish with his "Mystery of Love": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjg9S1BUNkw&index=12&list=PL0RAck7NiovYFvg1mhB6Fb0Sq2Wj2H898