Sometimes the Wider World Can only Be Apprehended Obliquely

- Marie Harris

Snakes are always all of a sudden, no matter where I encounter them. These two were baking under a sheet of black plastic that covered the old bales of mulch hay I needed for the onion row. A garter (imagine it wound in delicate coils around a stockinged thigh!) and another I can't name (silver-white core emblazoned along its length with brown ovals etched in delicate black). Exposed and surprised by light, uncoiling, they tongue the bright air. Spiders hurry away carrying bulging white sacs. Ants rearrange their ranks. There has been a profound disturbance. Each small movement occasions an intricate series of counter movements. I couldn't have predicted, for instance, the thousands of reactions to my shadow.


from: Poets Against the War, Sam Hamill, Sally Anderson, et al, ed.
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