After our Two Tongues of Gaia debut last night a man came up to me and asked, “What’s the story on the snakes?” He was referring to one of the poems I read, titled The Chase.
When I was in the Moroccan Sahara Desert in 2007 I had a vision of a massive exodus. In order to travel long distance humans and animals changed shapes and forms and piggybacked on each other. Tolls had to be paid before services were rendered. So the further they went, the less they possessed and thus memories of their origin were lost along the way.
About two weeks after I came back to San Francisco I had a vivid dream. I was wakened by something that was moving in my bed, slithering between my sheets. I forced my eyes opened. In the dim morning light I heard a crackling sound and saw two snakes with arched bellies racing across the room.
Did I carry the snakes home? What did they pay to get out of the desert? I sometimes wonder what have become of them: lost souls huddling in a corner down Mission Street, or lounging in an Arabic grocery store? Three years later one of the Berbers I met in the desert won the Green Card lottery and arrived in San Francisco. He is now going to school and working in a Moroccan restaurant.
