Man and Snake

The antidote to bad dreams and a sore throat on a cold and drizzly May day - Miso soup of last night's left overs..

Bad dreams in the night.

I’m in a room with a man on a bed and a cream and brown mottled snake hanging above him. I know he knows all about snakes.

He says very slowly,

Don’t make any sudden movements.

He’s a frozen statue, hunched in the corner of the duvet.

There is another snake exactly the same on the other side of the room draped over a hook like a floppy walking stick.

As I start to creep off the bed the snake above the man slithers down, opens his jaws and swallows him up in one big gulp  - a stocking clinging to a leg.

I reach the door and run out. I’m thinking I must get someone to help pull the man out of the snake. But if they go back in the room the other snake will eat them.....

I look back through the window of the room and see the shape of the man, kicking, in the silky skin of the snake. I think it’s my fault because I moved too quicky and it’s too late now. I feel helpless and distraught that I couldn’t save him.

 I wake up with a cold and sore throat and feel intermittently weepy all morning.....I make a list of everything I need to forgive in my life...then it's time to take the rhubarb to town.