For Val Healey
Val sees me in the garden
and dangling her rubber snake
Mr.Squiggles, in her gnarled hands
asks me for the twenty second time
in the four years that we’ve been neighbours
if I am afraid of snakes
and I tell her that I most certainly am
even the fake ones creep me out
like her Mr.Squiggles here
and then I know it’s coming –
I’m listening to her story again
which I now know scene for scene
but always make it a point
to look interested
like I’m hearing it for the very first time –
that story of Val aged eight
somewhere up in the Blue Mountains
picking vanilla lilies in the summer
when an irate tiger snake
lunges for her heel in the bushes
Val being nimble-footed and badass
swiftly snatches it by its tail
lassoes it around in the air
and flings it far into the undergrowth
and the snake is briefly cock-eyed
scramble-brained and nauseous
like its Biblical predecessor
on the day it was caught mischief-making
messing around in Eden
and eight year old Val stands arms akimbo
watching the critter slither away
more draconian in scare tactics
than good ol’ God of the Old Testament
then blowing me a kiss
laughs and wiggles Mr.Squiggles
and ambles back to her unit.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney artist, poet, and pianist, of Indian heritage. She holds a Masters in English and is a member of Sydney’s North Shore Poetry Project and Authora Australis. Her recent poems have been published in several print and online literary journals and anthologies. She likes to write about everyday experiences. Her superpower is making people laugh. She has a terrible weakness for chocolate, and is obsessed with painting magpies. www.poetry.oormila.com