PART III

SNAKES in the GRASS

Silently stalking the forest path

Coming suddenly upon a clearing of grass

Discovering a pair of huge Hamadryads

Ritually dancing an ancient mating ceremony

Their majestic heads rising eight feet in the air

Slowly circling round one another

In a graceful pirouette

Their sleek beautiful skins

Undulating in sensuous rhythms

Their hoods swaying to and thro

In a long hypnotic trance

Forked tongues flickering

Tasting the moist warm evening air

The entrancement of their bodies' embrace

And the quiet beauty of their display

Makes me stop, step back and wonder

The wisdom of using a gun

To destroy the threat they pose

For the human intruder

To rebuke their power over the human mind

Or of taking a snapshot to preserve forever such a rare vision

Held for public presentation

That the clicking of the poised shutter

Or the pulling of the cocked trigger

Would not thereby suddenly end forever

This sensitive ocassion of nature's ultimate mystery

Or the innate movements of instinct and understanding

Better to quickly behold the miracle unfold

And then to quietly back up in one's tracks

To steer and extra wide berth around the spot

Than to risk being fatally bitten

By a final man-made mistake

HUMAN TALK, ANIMAL WALK

Along the many wild ways of nature

Humans always talk

And animals always walk

And though they share the same paths

Never shall their two ways meet

Animals are silent and vigilant in their stalk

Always aware of their environment

Their senses attuned

To the all their surroundings

Humans sort of bumble

Mumble and stumble along

Their minds always somewhere else

Unaware of what lurks near by

Until they are suddenly startled

By something unexpected

Wild creatures survive by fright

And so always suddenly take flight

And humans think without acting and act without thinking

So they cannot but help talking as they walk

When people and animals meet

The person always says something

And the animal always begins running

The human waits for an answer

While it asks a question

The animals expect some movement

The humans ask without moving

The animals move without answering

The only messages exchanged

Are strange glances?

Between different pairs of eyes

A mysterious bond of silent meaning

That seeing believes

A silent, instantaneous signal

Momentarily stopping one's next breath

And keeping the other from taking a step

EDGE of the JUNGLE

Living at the edge of the Jungle

At No. 16 Jalan Bulan

The end of a short-side street

Back by a small hill

Everyday a long march of ants

Making a four-inch wide trail

Through the entire house

Everyday I spray them with rid-sect

And follow their line of march

As far as I can outside

Every following day

Another new trail forms

Through the house

Again I spray them down

And sweep them all up

Again they reappear the next morning

Always a new trail, sometimes across the floor,

Sometimes across the ceiling and down the walls

Sometimes leading through a window outside

Then under the eaves and beneath the shelves

Huge cockroaches flew through the air

Climbing the walls of the kitchen and back compounds

I douse them also with rid-sect

And they suddenly take off

Fly out of control

Sometimes doing a barrel roll

Then spasmodically falling

Straight to the ground

They lay on their backs

And twitch for a while

Until I sweep them up

A very large chi chak was nesting in the overflow drain

Of our kitchen sink

Sometimes I would see it in the morning or at night

With its tail sticking out of the hole while washing the rice or chopping ice

I considered the chi chak a harmless lizard

Even friendly little fellows

Never had I seen a gecko as big as this

Little fellows that hung upon the walls

Making soft chirping sounds

And eating mosquitoes

One day I found I had slammed the screen door

Upon a tiny baby lizard

It's little lifeless body

Swept carelessly between the cracks

Of the red floor tiles

One night

Going to the outhouse with a candle

I was brushing my teeth

When a big six inch centipede

Came crawling out the drain

Of the outhouse sink

Barely visible by candlelight

Directly beneath my face

Excited, I ran back into the house

To fetch the Rid Sect

I sprayed it well and it fled back down the drainpipe

I fetched a pair of chopsticks

And slowly picked it back out

It squirmed as I dropped it into a plastic bag

And threw it into the garbage

The next day I found it was still alive

I suddenly felt guilty for subjecting it

To so much unnecessary punishment

And I admired its tenacity

I let it go in the corner of the front yard

Hoping it would not come back inside the compound

I gave up trying to kill the ants, appreciating their persistence

I was careful not to slam the doors on any more chi chaks

And left mother alone in her nest in the sink

But the termites in the wood frame of the house

Still had to be treated

I gave up trying to keep a clean, insect-ridden home

Like a good American should

I even got used to the mosquitoes, when I learned that the mosquito coils

Caused cancer

I gave up weeding the compound, as the weeds kept coming back

I cut the lawn with a single handle sickle

The kind you have to swing over your head

But would soon be so drenched in sweat

I soon abandoned that also

I managed to accumulate all the dead brush

And branches in the back yard

Into a single pile for burning

Near the front gate

But the fire was hard to start

And would not stay burning unless continuously tended

And the smoke drifted slowly across

The entire street

It too me three days to burn all the rubbish

Before I gave that up too

Then I let the Tamil family across the street,

Harvest the big Marunga tree in the back

And the Chinese girls would take the green mangoes

And papayas from the side

Everyone who visited would pluck and skin the small rambutans in the front

By the old rickety iron-gate

And I learned to love the coconuts cut on the other side of the house

Two tall trees we would harvest

by tying my small sickle to two long, taped together poles

Once in a while an exotic bird would land in our trees

Black birds would always eat the garbage

Tearing off the plastic bags left hanging on the front chain-link fence

Scattering the garbage across the yard

There were always a few kingfishers about

Strange noises would sometimes come from the hills at night

And there were always little rhesus monkeys hanging round about

Even one or two dark gibbons

But I never did see a nice big snake

Except at the snake temple

Nor did I eve see a sun bear

Except at the monkey gardens

I supposed I'd have to move to a home deeper in the interior

If I wanted to find the famed tiger

Or the tapir or an elephant

MAMBA in a TREE

Sleek black prince

Sleepily you lie in wait

To catch off guard

Some unwary traveler

Protecting the path

Leading to your nest

Your eyes are cold

And determined

Your reach is long

And agile

Fearless

Hapless

Human wanderers

Stumble across your lair

In haughty, two-legged pride

You drop down a branch or two

And pose to strike them all

Without a warning

If they do not quickly heed your presence

Catching them suddenly by surprise

Hovering just above their heads

Startled they fall to the ground

Helplessly dropping their useless weapons

You have them on their knees

And now you may do with them as you please

They know now you have them at your mercy

As you lick out your forked tongue

And hiss out your chilling sentence

Freezing them in absolute terror

As you gracefully glide between their legs

And disappear beneath the bushes

Letting them live

With a gasping reminder

Never to trespass this way

Again

FEEDING SUN BEARS

Watching a pair of small sun bears

In their cage at the Monkey Gardens

On the island of Penang

Natives to the Island

The sign reads

In plain English and Chinese

"Please do not feed the bears"

And goes on to explain why

Without heeding the warning

I watch some Chinese carelessly throw

Peanuts into the cage

While the bears are wrestling

And frolicking about

Food and plastics cover the floor of the cage

As the bears go down into the deep moat

To fetch the fresh morsels

And the Chinese laugh in glee

At the antics of the bears

I return to the cage

The next time I visit the park

About six months later

But the cage is empty

And there are no more spectators

The bear is an endangered species

No longer to be found

Upon the island

BLUES at ZOOS

The blues

Deeper than the doldrums

Not as dark as depression

Beginning down in the gut

Triggered by something

Seen or heard

Or even unnoticed

Once starting

Rising

It grows worse

Until it pervades

One's entire being

Like some strange mysterious malady

Or like a chilling shadow

Cast over everything

An existential sadness

And pessimistic despair

Of missing home

Friends and family

A vague sense of hopelessness

Of things that seem never to change

Of a darkness that never ends

Everything moves more slowly

When you have got the blues

I always get the blues at Zoos

Every time I visit them

Everyone seems the same

And all the animals seem to have the blues too

I don't know if I give the blues to them

Or if they give it back to me

But it's definitely contagious

I've seen zookeepers looking depressed as hell

Ticket takers bored to death

Vendors straining under the hot sun

Monotone tour guides hurrying through there monotonous scripts

And caretakers seeming without a care in the world

The only ones

Who don't seem to get the blues at zoos

Are the many colorful visitors

And spectators who crowd in front with their small children

Pointing and laughing and ooing and aahing

The kids run hurriedly from exhibit to exhibit

Yelling and throwing things at all the animals

The parents tag along behind, with their video-recorders

And cameras taking pictures

Paying their brief respects

Then moving on behind the kinds

By the end of the day I become downright irritated

By people who rudely stand planted in your way

Or who always push right in front

Saying stupid things and making dumb faces at the apes

Deliberately antagonizing the wild lions

And lethargic tigers and lazy bears

And never looking back when they suddenly walk away

The saddest looking are the Gorillas and Chimps

They are often down right depressing

The monkeys sort of just lounge around

Rarely climbing on all the branches they've been provided

The bigger animals just lay on the ground

Around behind the wall where it's shady and they can't be easily seen

Or near the muddy water

The lions and tigers never make a sound

The wild dogs and wolves just pace round and round

The antelope stand there like a small herd of cows

With no where really to run or jump

Even the snakes seem dazed and permanently paralyzed

Never making a move

And all the many birds begin looking the same

In the many cages

I get the blues at what I see at the zoos

Sad, hopeless looking creatures in Small Square cages

With ugly humans on the outside looking in upon them

Instead of the other way around

Of being inside looking out

Upon the animals in the wild

The zoos always remind me

Of all our human strengths and many weaknesses

And I know there is nothing I can do

It is doubly depressing to learn

When reading all the signs

That just a few years before

There were thousands

And now they number in the tens or hundreds

It hits me like a bolt of lightening

Striking deep down into my gut

That for many of the animals

The zoos are their last remaining sanctuaries

Their only guarantee of survival

In a human kingdom

I always get the blues at Zoos.

BABY BIRD

Going to class one day

I found a strange looking bird

Fallen from its nest

I couldn't tell what kind it was

Its beak was long but crooked

And it came to a blunt end

Its gray feathers poked out in different directions

It looked like a cross between a morning dove

And a mocking bird

Or just some strange mutant

I got the ladder

And tried putting it back up the tree

But the nest was too high for me to reach

Then I remembered the unused tree house in the back yard

I found a shoebox for the baby, with a dish of water

I found the tree house and hung it from the tree

Reaching up, I dumped the baby in

I waited around a little while

Wondering if the mother would find it

I didn't mid if I was late to class

As the class wasn't very interesting

A couple of days later

I found the bird still in the nest

But a week later, I saw no more trace of it

Several years later

Having forgotten the whole incident

I saw a strange bird that looked quite familiar

I wondered if it remembered me

Or the tree that it was now perched in

It hung around for a little while

I would see it once and again in one tree or another

Then finally it disappeared

And I've never seen it since

SNAKE TEMPLE

Small lithe green tree adders

Hanging sedately on the spirit branches

Coiled on the floor beneath the lacquer cabinet

Seemingly unaware of the many human visitors

Or the Chinese photographer

Who holds a pair of snakes in his arms

Placing them in the tourist's faces

Who squirm and squeal in terrified delight

Letting them crawl through their hair

And around their necks

While the pictures being taken

Probably not knowing

That a de-fanged snake

Only survives a couple of months

Dying literally

At the hands of this man

Legend claims that the snakes

Gathered there quite naturally

And the shrine was blessed

As sacred soil

But locals say

That there used to be more snakes before

And over the years

There have been less

They say now it's not worth visiting any more

Its power is waning

One must ask if the snakes still come there

On there own

Or if they haven't been secretly replaced

By the stealthy hands of some man

*****

MONKEY GARDENS

Little boy

With a bag of peanuts

At the Monkey Gardens

The many troops of rhesus monkeys

Who wait along the edge of the forest

For the offerings of food

That people give them

The monkeys are unafraid

Of the little boy

And one large, silver hair old male

Simply walks up to the boy

And grabs the whole bag away

The boy is shocked

Into a silent gasp of terrified surprise

His howl was a bit delayed

The big monkey simply walked away

Sat down and began eating

Along a little trail

Well off the main path

The monkeys are less tame

And a little more bold

The little boy hid another bag of peanuts

Inside his short sleeved shirt

A small monkey slowly approaches him

And begins putting his little hands

Into the boy's pockets

The boy is too frightened to move

The monkey sits very close

Showing the boy his teeth

And patiently checks every pocket

And then looks down the collar of his shirt

The monkey reaches into the boy's shirt

And withdraws the prize of peanuts

And sits there next to the boy

Slowly eating them

Until the boy's father

Suddenly seizes the bag

Right out of the monkey's hands

The monkey lets out a howl

Shows its teeth and makes an aggressive move

But the father doesn't budge

And the monkey loses his nerve

Backing down

Until another bigger monkey

Chases the father and the boy away

The monkeys do not share their catch

With one another

The bigger ones

Lord it over the mothers and children

And greedily steal all they can carry

The mothers and children

Are always left at the side lines

Without a great deal to eat

Waiting patiently for a lucky toss

1994-5

Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.

Last Updated: 03/15/05