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[Leanne]

Mikey, I like this for the most part but I'm really disappointed that you start off with good iambic tetrameter and then seem to abandon it for no reason I can fathom -- with rhymes like this, the poem cries out for regular meter. The overall feel of the poem is quite spiritual -- I don't know if it's just the snake but there's a sense of oneness with the land that I also get from several pre-Christian legends.

A thousand years or more ago
cascading rain swept old growth snow
from out of shade of tree and rock
and down to shore of aching stream. -- lovely meter in this first stanza but this line kind of ruins it with somewhat tortured grammar. Perhaps "down to the shores of (something) stream" (aching is a wee bit odd)

That slinking snake grew fat below,
upon the glut of rain and frigid flow, -- just "on glut of" will fix the meter
then split his sides and was renewed
to writhe on twig and branch. -- another two syllables needed here, perhaps an adjective before "writhe"

Long ago I, too, was swallowed, though -- maybe "Once I too was swallowed, though"
then I rode on rain and warming snow, -- remove then
which laid me low beneath those banks,
shed too soon by greedy snake, grown gaunt. -- if you take out "greedy" this works

you lose the meter almost entirely at this point

Walking through the cool and vaunting light, -- vaunting? Really?
you’d see my golden specks which sparkle bright;
and maybe then you’d look at my round face
too close, and see these chips and cracks so long

ago impressed by journey out from graven bed,
beneath the water cooling those then dead;
so stony still and hard and cold are they
who dream of their return to sunny warmth,
while I dream on of warmer touches than the sun.

Note: I welcome whatever level of criticism you have the time and energy to throw at this.

Mikey.