A crack in the grass at their feet.
—The man jerks his legs back
and the black lash whips
swiftly—a quaking crevice
on yellow ground. It splits
the dust-mote laden refuge of late
afternoon with a low
winnowing rustle, shoots
like a loosed arrow from the human pair
who—startled—start backward
and freeze to stare.
Its cross-stitched skin glints, slick
with the sun it had lain in, an oiled refraction.
Perhaps it had been basking in wait
for dusk’s little animal jolts,
priming its throat. Perhaps
it had made a crushed-grass nest
in the sun’s seepage, some golden settlement.
—A gap of pause, in which two moths
list, clumsy and fresh
in ferruginous wings. The humans listen
while the snake hesitates, time hinged
on a break. Then, it slips
into grass blades, yes, but this—it slips
up, into the wrangle of branches
of a recently-leaved bush, uses that
as a ladder by which to loop
itself to a nearby fir, wires higher
the forked boughs. They hear rasps
of jostled foliage. The slim body of sound
skims bark, twines and writhes,
unfixing leaves, while the pair eye this,
their thoughts lifting
—this being the last thing
from this least thing to expect.
Look! she exclaims, as it reaches one perch
and the bough dips under its weight
(it is a big snake),
almost pours it to dirt. But no: it can bend
for such risk, clamber what’s vertical
to a place above their minds
within the fir tree’s needled fronds
which cast miniature rungs of shadow
rippling its coat. It lies quietly, mottled
by the softly blown fringe filtering light.