Five Steps You Die Poem by Raymond Farrell

Today as I sit
Under the locust tree
I recall vividly
My early morning walk
Before I came to Hangzhou
I read up about the city
Zhejiang province and Southeast China
The weather, the flora and fauna
History and tourist attractions in Hangzhou like
The West Lake, Luihe Pagoda
Cuiguang Pavilion and Hupao Spring
This morning early
I decided to go for a walk
Before the heat and humidity prevailed
The northern border of the university
Is shared with a railway depot
A delapitated fence marks the property line
On either side of the fence
Are unkept fields punctuated
With some grooves of
Coniferous, deciduous and bamboo trees
There are a few well-marked paths
For walking
But I am a country boy at heart
So I took to tramping the bush
And walking the fields
Claiming this as my own patch of countryside
In the middle of this megaopolis
Of over 21 million
But today as I walked along the road
Skirting the north border of the campus
I saw a friend of mine
Who works on the university grounds
About to scrape
The carcass of a snake
Off the road
That had been run over in the night
The creature
Had clearly slithered out
Of the unkept fields nearby
Its light brown back
And dark lateral triangles on each side
Clearly identified it as the deadly
Pit viper
Known locally as the five steps you die snake
All the data I had read
Came flooding back into my mind
I decided then and there
There would be no deviating
From the well-marked paths
And as long as I am in Hangzhou
The only fields and forests
I shall roam
Will be those in my dreams.