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How the Cobra Lily traps insects is a ballet for Trout Fishing in America, a ballet to be performed at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The plant is beside me here on the back porch.
It died a few days after I bought it at Woolworth's. That was months ago, during the presidential election of nineteen hundred and sixty.
I buried the plant in an empty Metrecal can.
The side of the can says, "Metrecal Dietary for Weight Control," and below that reads, "Ingredients: Non-fat milk solids, soya flour, whole milk solids, sucrose, starch, corn oil, coconut oil, yeast, imitation vanilla," but the can's only a graveyard now for a Cobra Lily that has turned dry and brown and has black freckles.
As a kind of funeral wreath, there is a red, white and blue button sticking in the plant and the words on it say, "I'm for Nixon."
The main energy for the ballet comes from a description of the Cobra Lily. The description could be used as a welcome mat on the front porch of hell or to conduct an orchestra of mortuaries with ice-cold woodwinds or be an atomic mailman in the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines.
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"Nature has endowed the Cobra Lily with the means of catching its own food. The forked tongue is covered with honey glands which attract the insects upon which it feeds. Once inside the hood, downward pointing hairs prevent the insect from crawling out. The digestive liquids are found in the base of the plant.
"The supposition that it is necessary to feed the Cobra Lily a piece of hamburger or an insect daily is erroneous."
I hope the dancers do a good job of it, they hold our imagination in their feet, dancing in Los Angeles for Trout Fishing in America.
Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America
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