Barry Butson
Cobra Wine
Tomato-red sun rises into a baby-blue sky.
A young Vietnamese girl climbs too,
a tall palm to get coconuts.
Her friends, brothers and sisters and
cousins bold a blanket below
to catch the falling fruit.
She climbs in tiny brown shorts and bright yellow blouse.
As she reaches for a nut ten metres up,
a large cobra strikes
from behind it
but misses perhaps
Just a warning. Enough
anyway to make her lose her grip and fall
to the blanket below.
It cushions her just enough;
she escapes death twice
that day.
Her grandmother in her shirt of flowers and parrots
shoots the snake
and when it falls, the men
skin it. It is a rare
and deadly species, the one with three
red dots between its yellow cat’s eyes.
They remove the eyes, gall bladder
and other glands, but plop the rest
into a demi-jar of wine
and let it ferment
just outside the room
of the little girl it had warned.
She has to see it pickled every day
and when the time comes
to take off the wine
her grandfather asks her
if she wants a drink.
The sun is golden
as it sets behind the palm.
The night firing will soon begin.
Page(s) 61
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