A Bullsnake elegy
He’s a paragon of rectitude. Like spiral time,
he has no reverse gear. Agent provocateur, creature
without guile, he turns up only when we least suspect.
Emissary of innocence, a world without dimension,
he’s a line from here to there, a length, however long
in life, that thought makes always longer.
At the threshold of confusion joining intellect to dream,
the nebulous horizon stitching earth to sky, he occupies
the speckled borderlands of fear and fascination.
He’s the visitor, the visited, a slender reticence
without intention, a universe of noiseless repetition,
a scandalous appearance, a time without extension.
The evidence of endless questions, persistent source
of absent answers, he’s a linearity concealed in light,
an uninvited vagabond with nowhere good to hide.
Yet funny how his image and this coiling syllable
his name (dreadful as divinity’s), can strangle speech
and startle blood like the sudden passage of a god.
DB Jonas is the author of two collections of poetry, Tarantula Season and Other Poems (2023) and Flight Risk, Poems and Translations (2025. Further examples of his work can be accessed at jonaspoetry.com.
