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Today I became a snake with hair,
in a such a state we must wonder
about sleep and figures, hair, for example,
as I rise from a hole and confront the day.

Sure, when they saw me there was wonder,
but I had to wonder also, speaking of appearances,
about their own hair, their own eyes,
their own methods of eating and evacuation.  Still–

Birds and birds there are (as not all birds
are birds), when she saw me
her eyes turned sepia and the whales
and the fishes flew the coast, just to even
out the metaphor of birds and sea creatures.

And consider the land animals, when they saw me.
The hyena and the bear took a few bluish berries
of discombobulation down from the trees
(the hyena fished them from a rotting chest cavity)
and screwed those berries into their eyes holes
when they saw me swish up from the hole
with my hair and those nuts of vanity I
had secured firmly and with confidence
between my new scaled lids. Yes,

I wonder at this innovation, this hair, this speed
with which I rush through the grass and the others’
eyes following me, how the goat’s ears, when she saw me
turned into dove wings, maybe a frightened dove,
maybe a dove who had just moments before
knew itself for years as a crow or a marmoset–

So things went, with my hair and my scales,
and vanity lubricating the cavities behind my eyes,
that is until I found my guitar and my shoes–
and it struck me, stupefaction in the form
of a whale’s hand–how would I play them,
how would I put them on as I had no hands,
no fingers, no feet or nails?

Which is maybe what the whale had been thinking all along.