Climactic

The day is cooling off.

Inside tall grasses next to a path

of dirt, stone, ant trails

and occasional coyote scat--

a path we’ve walked for hours--

suddenly a rattler shakes

her maracas insistently

welcoming, warning tired hikers

to the coming dusk’s strangeness,

(like first quiverings of an earthquake

that break through private reveries)

awakening and settling here

among gray boulders, great

oaks and circling hawks aloft

who scribble the news across a sky of pink light:

day’s quiet secret cracked

percussively apart

by snake music.