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Posts Tagged ‘snake’

One New Garden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 24, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

beneath the cottonwood

three snakes unbraid as I pass—

I offer them my apple

 

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In the Lengthening Days

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 13, 2014| 6 Comments »

Instead of telling him I am angry,
never mind what it was, it was
nothing much, but I was angry.
And did I tell him? No. I went outside
and shoveled snow and told the driveway
all about it. Told the sky as it changed
from gray to blue. Told the empty
cottonwood branches. Told the missing moon.

*

The snake coiled up her arm
and round her nape, around
her face. It was red and gold and black
and never rested in one place. It twined
around her torso, round her jaw
and round her back. I watched
the woman as she sat there, eyes closed,
arms and spine relaxed.

*

A question I have never asked
but someone else asked for me
and printed the study for all to read.
Why do birds live longer than turtles?
Not the mass. Not the heart rate.
The resting metabolic figures only somewhat correlate.
It’s how much energy they expend
over their lifetime. The answers to this study
come slow.

*

Hopping mad. Glopping mad.
Splopping, troppling, blopping mad.
Hard to be mad when
you’re rhyming nonsense
with nonsense.
That didn’t stop me.

*

In the story the sage
talks about the knowledgeable man.
When the deadly snake twists up
his arm, he thinks to himself,
This snake could kill me. I should
brush it off. The wise man
doesn’t think at all. He simply
brushes it off.

*

Who is the one who thinks
she is angry? And who is the one
that notices her?

*

A straight line of black
through the snow. A wider
straight line of black
through the snow. A whole
driveway of black pavement
lined with snow.

*

I do not want to outlive
the Galapagos Tortoise
who lives a projected 170 years.
But I do want to live
long enough to learn
to love you better.

*

Don’t let it touch me,
don’t let it touch me I think,
and then it is happening
already the snake is moving
around my wrist, my elbow,
my armpit. Don’t move,
I think. Too late to brush
it away. Sit still, I think.
Relax. Expend no energy.

*

Snake. Bake. Cake. Lake.
Smake. Trake. Grake. Sprake.

*

The anger is real and then
it is gone. The woman is real
and she is still here. The snake
was a fiction and still
it is twisting around the woman
who stands in the drive and watches
the sky as it turns from blue to gray again.
It seems to happen slow.
She only has 2.25 billion heartbeats left
if she is lucky.
She tells the drive she wants to make the most
of every one.

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