My nature trail is the same
today as yesterday,
tough leaves on trees
clinks like metal in the breeze,
the sun bakes and red soil cracks.
What’s needed now is rain.

Only ants are busy
carrying tiny sticks down
into their underground world
building mighty cathedrals
and super market malls.
We are related to them
and not to lazy apes.

A sleeping snake is blocking my way,
tap my stick on a stone
and when it awakes
flicks a tongue at me,
I’m too big a prey,
quickly it slithers into the undergrowth.

In the shadow of a carob tree
I sit down, think of my love
and how different we are,
she likes to live next door to a hairdresser
while I follow a trail that leads away from her.