Snake
By Katie Peterson
The thunderstorm came like a pot boiling over and the color
of water was made by that, all of a sudden, a pigment
more tropical than dense with the reflection of light.
Everywhere the scent of at least five different kinds of plants
lifted up. The desert can’t talk back but I believe
it breathes instead, breathes vivid when the water
wants it the water can’t wait and it breathes back.
I turned and went into the house.
Under the dining room table, a snake.
Green with a yellow stripe bisecting its back.
Motion ate each centimeter of floor
and air, scared, it makes sense to say, though there
exists or existed no safer time ever in which that shape
wouldn’t want to move, dead August being the exception
to this when heat makes molasses of all of us.
Why did I want to chase it out? I did, I got a rake and kept
making it make that beautiful scared
shape upon the floor, so clean.
Like two ice cubes rubbing each other
and too cold to melt. Nothing organized that fear.
Seeing the edges it found its way out.
--------
It was a pretty quiet work-and-chores Monday, though I'm still not even caught up on laundry from last week. We woke to frost, we took a walk on a chilly afternoon to see bunnies, and in between I messaged Maddy for her birthday and had a video call with Alice, her mom's best friend, with whom I had not caught up in far too long. We ate all our leftovers from Mexico for dinner.
There was a lot of football for a Monday because of games postponed by Covid, and though I hate rooting for the Raiders, it was nice of them to beat Cleveland for the Ravens. Then we spent the longest night of the year watching the rest of this season of The Witcher, which gave the women great storylines and had lots of lovely relationships. Animals at Croyden Creek Nature Center yesterday:
No comments:
Post a Comment