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.
