Sunday, May 13, 2018

CLIMACTIC

The day is cooling off.

In tall grasses next to a path
of dirt, stone, ant trails
and occasional coyote scat

where we’ve walked for hours,

a rattler suddenly shakes
her maracas insistently

welcoming and warning tired hikers
like the first quivers of an earthquake
breaking through private reveries

to the coming strangeness of dusk
awakening and settling here

among gray boulders, great
oaks and circling hawks aloft

who scribble the news onto a sky of pink light:

Day’s silence ripped
apart by snake.

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