Venom, by Jessica Isaacs

Fee Fi Foe Fum [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Venom

the young, rough green snake 
wound her way among pennywort stems 
in the warm, marshy womb 
of the deep East Texas swamp, docile 
and unaware of the blue heron 
looming 

silent and still 
against the gray world above her, 
so still 

the snake saw only 
another bit of blue and green 
blending into the swirl 
of mud and water, concerned completely 
with feeding on insects and frogs, her small world 
immediate and provisionary, when

like lightning
the heron’s long neck 
sliced

red through murky greens, black beak 
the sharpest forceps, 
extracting the snake, still wriggling and warm,
a vital organ cut 
from mother earth’s soft body, the heron 
fixing 

a master surgeon’s eye
on the snake’s open mouth, 
knowing 

with certainty

the only venom in the marsh
was the approaching hurricane, 

still miles

and miles 

away

Jessica Isaacs

Editor's note: Jessica Isaacs' poem was inspired not by the poor substitute photo above, as pretty as it is, but by Pennywort Pool, by David Bates, 1988. We regret that we were not able to get permission to run the piece, but hope you will click through to see it here.

Jessica Isaacs, founder and co-editor of Dragon Poet Review, received the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry for Deep August.  Her poems appear in Oklahoma Today, Poetry Bay, Cybersoleil Literary Journal, All Roads Lead Home Poetry Blog, Malpais Review, SugarMule’s Women Writing Nature, One Sentence Poems, Short Order Poems, My Life with a Funeral Director, Scissortail Commemorative CD, and Elegant Rage.