'Paradise Lost', by Ute Carson
The snake was never an intruder in paradise
but a permanent resident.
Snakes can be flexible like a thread or
thorny and crooked like a twig,
long and fat like a boa constrictor
or as small as my little finger.
The snake is ever-present,
cloistered in the warm enclosure of my heart.
It sleeps a lot but at time stretches its neck,
spitting out my ill feelings toward a person,
or the injustice and cruelty of the world.
When it arches its back I have much poison to expel.
Only when I soothe its palpitations
does it coil back into repose
as I hiss, “Now I bid you to be still!”
Paradise Lost by Alexandre Cabanel (1867)