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Advice: A Book of Poems

Chapter 8: RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE I
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About This Book

A series of short lyric pieces speaks directly to plants, animals, objects, streets and people, offering counsel, observation and ironic tenderness through apostrophic address. Urban and industrial vignettes sit beside pastoral and fable-like poems, with occasional dialogues and parable structures that alternate between sardonic humor and elegiac calm. Recurrent contrasts between motion and stillness highlight scenes of labor, performance and fleeting beauty, while a personal, conversational tone links meditative portraits and sharp urban sketches to broader reflections on perception, loss and small, uncanny moments.

RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE I

Rounded to a wide eyed clownishness
Crowned by the shifting bravado
Of his long, brown ears,
The rabbit peeked at the sky.
To him, the sky seemed an angelic
Pasture stripped to phantom tranquility,
Where one could nibble thoughtfully.
He longed to leave his mild furtiveness
And speak to a boldness puzzled by his flesh.
With one long circle of despairing grace
He flashed into the air,
Leaping toward his heaven.
But down he crashed against a snake
Who ate him with a meditative interest.
From that day on the snake was filled
With little, meek whispers of concern.
The crushed and peaceful rabbit’s dream
Cast a groping hush upon his blood.
He curled inertly on a rock,
In cryptic, wilted savageness.
In the end, his dry, grey body
Was scattered out upon the rock,
Like a story that could not be told.