Tail anchored, the python
suspends itself midway across
the crevice in the rock;

forty thousand bats come and go,
like a plague of insects,
but big and juicy enough

to make a constrictor happy. It lunges,
picks one from the air,
asphyxiates and swallows.

Before its jaws can hinge again
it has another. It's all-u-can-eat night again
at the bat exodus, and it is

the season to gorge.
I'm reminded of that woman
in front of me in line at the buffet

today when she discovered
the Mussels Fra Diavolo
was gone. She appeared ready to strike

and I detected
an inhuman power in her vertebrae,
a twitch in her slots arm.

I consoled myself for her
with a mound of shrimp,
crunched them between my teeth,

Where they sparkled like money.
Outside the boardwalk's swept empty
by a swarm of winds.

The long winter is setting in,
And somewhere a python
is curling up to sleep off its jackpot of bats.

-published in 360 Degrees, March, 1999