Snakebird Poems | Examples

Once Upon a Scummy Pond

A skinny black girl, her torso submerged,
long neck holding her head up like a swimming Anhinga.

I should not know what a ‘snakebird’ is --- I am eleven years old
and have lived in the same dirty part of London all my life.

Florida is a missing piece in a school jigsaw,
while the British Empire is a scummy quarry basin pond
behind a brick factory.

My body feels rasped by cosmic sluice gates.
I could tell the girl wonderful things, 
but my skull is an open hatch
jettisoning the rest of my life.

Small boys call to me in a trilling tongue,
a pictorial language made from sticks and stones. 
Their faces familiar but their names
long drowned by decades.

I am recalling, falling through a time circle
in a rippling pond. 
Anhinga-girl circles around,
eyes wide, waiting for me to say something.

I don't know how to speak to children from other places.
I gulp water and splutter from a faraway memory.
She grins and frog-legs away.