Snake Bite
by Kate Kingston

I reach for the shovel, don’t see the snake
when it rears up behind me,
nicks my leg with its fang. I feel its razor
in the hollow of my knee, turn to see a glaze
of brown-orange diamonds
churning through the grey-green salt brush, my scream
herding the snake away.

I need to know if it’s venomous, so I memorize
its camouflage in red-orange reeds,
its triangular head, its wide half-coils, its five-foot length,
its wrist-size diameter, its orange
variegated scales flowing away in panic, its yellow eye
a small star above the grasses.



 

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