The Thursday Review: Snake, a Poem

first published June 17, 2014

A snake lives
beneath the hedge on the path
to my girl's bus stop.

Often I just catch him,
shining tail tucking up
beneath the leaves as we round the bend,

though once or twice I've seen him stretched out
green and black in all his glory
across the morning-warming concrete of the walk,
too languid and too cool
to coil for cover.

And often I feel the lightning
thrill of ancient enmity when I do,
the sprouting Seed of Eve
surging suddenly in my heart:
were it not for the awful thought
of his lithe body writhing,
twisting terrified about
my heel in his death throes,
I would crush his head.

Rarely but sometimes I catch myself.

And the memory of another bruised heel,
dusty and ancient and bleeding long ago
quiets the urge in me:
this too is nephesh, it seems to say,
dust-born at the Word of the Creator.
And anyways: look at those
bright black eyes,
shrewd and burning and beautiful
with all the secret wisdom of the earth.