Kingsnakes and Other Poems

This selection of 70 poems emerged autochthonously over the past thirty years of my journey towards wholeness. I first encountered a California Kingsnake in the wild at the age of seven. This species of kingsnake is found in the San Francisco and Mount Diablo areas, Santa Cruz Mountains, and East Bay hills, where I live and practice in Montclair, Oakland. Kingsnakes are scientifically known as Lampropeltis californiae. The title of my book "Kingsnakes" grew spontaneously out of psyche's selfexperiences and soil influences: my Snake-Ground. I continued to dream and write poems about kingsnakes during my decades in analysis and analytic training. The California kingsnake is an ally: a benevolent Serpent-power in my soul. She speaks in these poems. The poems are offered as an invitation to go on a shamanic path with the author on your own journey. I attempt through poetic rhythms, drumming, and visioning to open readers up to the Wisdom of the Feminine. The Snake-hero of the poems is resistant to poisoning. He learns how to metabolize negative experiences during difficult life transitions. The kingsnake confronts death-dealing enemies and emerges unscathed from the battle. Its resistance to venom?the kingsnake's natural immunity?mirrors the archetype of the shamanic initiate, as a poet who passes through a series of trials of strength and returns with a medicine for the benefit of the community. Pacific rattlesnakes symbolize danger by rattling their tails. The scientific name for Pacific rattlers is Crotalus. Kingsnakes don't avoid rattlers-they wrap around them, constrict them, and consume them whole. This corresponds to shadow work in its most visceral forms: subduing, digesting, and metabolizing poisonous affects and transforming toxins into psychic antibodies. The kingsnake's digestion of venomous prey becomes a living metaphor for the psyche's ability to transmute evil through shamanic poetry and techniques of ecstasy.