Snake Portrait

Arkansas summer, honeysuckle, hummingbirds, brush off the dirt.

Heat beats, water rush, snakes slink, lizards strategically retreat.

Lack of shiver, lack of care, spending all day in the sun of Arkansas.

Grandparent’s house, grandfather’s beer, grandmother’s red hair.

Scorpion, black widow, tarantula, brown recluse

up the walls, under the sink, in my parents bed, on the couch.

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, hidden copperhead.

Rattle, violin [Learn], hour glass, red on yellow [Learn]

Water Moccasin; black as space, she is face to face with me.

Her darkness runs across the surface of the creek, fast like hot lead through skin.

Water Moccasin; magnificent artist of motion, she is face to face with him,

Grandpa and his Ithaca double-barreled shotgun and it shattering the wind.

Sisters, they panic at the scorpions in the dresser drawer, their black stillness.

Mother, she fears the copperhead in the path, she hates it’s deceitful kin.

Father, he respects his own servitude to the brown recluse.

Grandfather, he fears for me, for being incautious, for being young.

I fear a loss of the trees, the creek, A Change. I fear not what they bring.

I cry at the moccasin’s blood in the creek, I’m naïve.

I laugh at everyone’s screams when a tarantula crawls up the wall

And now a gaze of a snake reminds me of me.