The Head Stays

Under the leaves in Sarawak a snake the length of a pencil is tapped, and goes over, and over, one side, then the other, a loop of its own back swung down past its face like a skipping rope that is also the child jumping. Everything behind it tumbles. The head doesn't. The head stays pointed down the track, lifted, level, steadiest when it's going fastest, and you'd think it was riding, the way a cup rides a tray.

I'd bet it isn't riding. There's an ear in there, no flap, no drum to speak of, just three small rings of fluid wired to the neck, feeling every turn the body makes and paying it back the other way. The still part is the busiest part. My grandmother could hold a hymn on the back seat of a bus through every hairpin down to the lake, the whole bus leaning, her note not leaning, and people said how easy she made it look.

Under the same leaves the cousins, same spine, same tap, just went on writing their S in the dust. Nobody knows they can't. A tap on a lab track is one question asked one way, and a voice that never shouts in the library hasn't told you a thing about the fire. Call it unasked. Call it a door with the key still in it.

And did the rolling ever get one away from you? No, the man laughs. We are quicker than them. So: four times its own best speed, and still a hand comes down, and there in the hand, still level, the small head is pointed the way it meant to go.