Mid-Central Region

Scaled Gallows

Scales can slide around branches easily

catching what hangs in the air

by the neck–

Do you know what

a hawk or an eagle fears most

from their predatory position?

Gallows.

Swinging in the sky.

Imagine a live rope

hissing its way toward you

flicking its tongue preemptively

and you are not fast enough on your branch.

You’re not prepared for the way

blood pounds around your neck when

it’s not even your own.

You’re not used to constriction

floating beneath clouds

swooping down for food and fear installations;

you live freely unbound by the ground.

Well, your demise is your freedom

and somehow as you try to take flight

the python snatches you

squeezes you between its sides.

Your last monument

to fear?

The stretch

of a reptile who found something big enough

to swallow whole, its past victims predecessing 

its length in lumps

much smaller than you’ll be,

dangling you in the wind

at the top of the tree for any prey

or any predator to see,

and threatening clouds above.

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This poem was inspired by a video I saw of a large snake, I believe a constrictor or a python, strangling a hawk to death by using its body to hang it at the top of a tree.