I.
It was just as people who knew
had said.
Not cold, slimy, tumescent,
An earthworm gone riot,
But dry, firm, feeling of
a whispered roughness, as if tightly scaled with
insect wings, or
infant fingernails
(Perhaps its diet?)
I knew snakes had no poison in this place.
We each had stopped, immobilized:
A belt, of thunder?
A shadow, crossed?
An acrid gust of wind
breathing raw?
(I can only speak for myself.)
I saw
The dark contortion of its body,
pointed toward the road,
I saw
No mouth, no nose, no ears, no eyes:
We each had stopped, immobilized.
Cars traveled that road
It was sure to get hit
I reached down and gripped
At the center of it.
Holding it at arm's length, watching it
Straining, rearing its toothless head
back, feigning
A strike with its toothless mouth:
I knew snakes had no poison this far south,
But courage left as quickly as it had come.
I crossed the road and flung its writhing form into the brush
and hurried on.
II.
The hand that held
the snake smelled, left dripping
some brown blight curdled
yellow, and some clearer liquid:
Its excrement, if reason serves me right,
An odor of dead things (Perhaps its diet?)
Things it had killed, or had long since been dead.
I shuddered, wiped
my hand
in the gravel, in the grass, in the sand that was near.
The smell is still here.
III.
When I was a girl
(I am still that girl )
My father held my arms
While my brother
held a snake (at arm's length)
in my face.
We no longer speak. I
have stopped. I know my place.
IV.
And now, faintly,
(a whispered roughness, as if tightly scaled with infant
fingernails?):
When I was a child
(I am still that child)
My father's father
molested me.
We no longer
Speak.
He is
Dead.
His body smells of excrement, of things that are no more.
I do not think
I killed him
I was a child of four.
V.
I knew the snake would never make
it to the other
Side, unaided,
I knew.
But now the snake must find its own way.
VI.
I am the snake. And so are they.
VII.
I will not rescue them.