Snake
sawdust and straw and cheepings
behind a wall
(so that the older, wiser chickens
might not peck the little ones to
small bloody feathered balls
but rather watch maternal
from away behind woven wire)
a small boy sits and plays
with the chicks
feeling the tiny scratch of their
spurs as they run on his neck
and delight with the feel of such
little life! so simple!
food pan, water pan, chicken poop, noise.
then to lunch
noodles and cheese in front of
Sesame Street and
a nap on a hilltop
his mother dusting the crumbs off
the table
gradual waking up into late
afternoon sun slanting diagonal onto his bed
hot and sticky
to walk down barefoot
on the cool gravel
to see the chicken coop and the babies
and walking into the coop, he sees
only the babies, one of them upside down.
'Must have fallen into its feeder' and he
reaches
out his hand for it until
SNAP his mind goes still and polaroids out the rest of the picture: that of a
Snake curled and
erect
legs protruding from its
Mouth.
A strong wind blows this boy
as straw
up the driveway to his mother
where a strange light comes in her eyes
and her hands are rocks
and she picks up a spade and fixes herself to the bedrock below
inexorably draws the chicken coop to her
pushing the house and the driveway and the boy
back
alone.
who puts on Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
as loud as he can stand
because he doesn't know who will come back from down
the gravel road past the whispering cottonwoods
and can't stand the sudden quiet in his imagination:
woman who so suddenly put down her peanut-butter jar to
saunter in the sun with a scythe
or the dusky whip of the child-eating snake who baited her by eating
her babies?
she cut its head off.