Sssnake!

Hissing, spitting, rearing his hoods,
The five-headed snake held sway
Over the Yamuna River long ago
So the legends of Krishna say.

Poisoning the waters, killing all
Who chanced to come that way,
Making life a misery for
The cowherds who had long lived there.

Krishna, the young boy, climbed up a tree
Whose branches stretched over the water
And, avoiding the forked tongues,
on that snake’s head,
He jumped, shouting with laughter.

The people watched aghast as he danced
First on one head, then another.
The snake had by then, used up his venom in vain,
And to the river ran Krishna’s mother.

The diluted poison was carried downstream
And the snake fled away to the sea.
When his friends asked why Krishna
Had let the monster go free,

He replied, “Well, he didn’t mean any harm
He was just following his destiny.
If he’d been deliberately vicious,
It’d have been another story.”

Men lived much closer to nature then
And all life was highly valued,
Now we’re focussed only on our goals
About interdependent life, we’ve no clue!

The world depends on symbiosis
All earthly life is interlinked
The disappearance of a single species
Could lead to a domino effect…
And all life become extinct!