Python Snap
My sonıs flown in from Coolangatta
(driving there from Mullumbimby)
full of music industry chatter,
how he copes with all its changes,
deals with festival directors,
uses new IT to further
publicise the bands he manages.
And, he says, you know our python
(only from what you tell me, I say)
well, itıs on the move again.
(He lives in an old farmhouse up
an eagle-haunted steep valley -
after rain thereıs twelve waterfalls -
way behind Mullumbimby.
The work he does is mostly nearby
in money-spoiled Byron Bay.)
With warmer weather, itıs more active.
We hear it over our heads between
the ceiling and the galvanised iron.
Yesterday I heard a thump
outside my window there it was
all ten feet of it, dropped from a tree,
maybe on some small animal.
The cats of northern New South Wales
are jumpy they know that pythons
lurk in trees till something edible
passes below, then thump, the pythonıs
dropped. They canıt move fast on the ground,
you know. I snapped it on my phone-cam.
Show you later.ı
First he shows his sister, my daughter,
who recoils in horror. (Sheıs been there.)
Its spread head fills half the screen,
and way behind stretches the tail.
Yes, he can email it to us
and does, to my computer screen:
so big and forward, its head has
a certain charm. And as we keep
assuring ourselves, not venomous.
Wednesday 19 September 2007
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
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