A few long miles up Hog Canyon this rare late-March heat is drawing forth the crotalids from their homes of earth and rock where they had sensed me scrambling over them while hunting quail. It is the dread greenish brown Mojave I fear the most, known locally as "dog killer," lifting its wary head higher than you think possible, coiling its length beneath itself as if a boxer could carry a single, fatal punch. This is the farthest reach from the petting zoo like my Africa's dream black mamba. I tell her I'm sorry I shot a cousin rattler in our bedroom. How idiotic. She's a cocked .357 snake, rattling "Get the hell out of here. This land is my land when I awake. Walk here in the cool of morning or not at all." She's my childhood myth of the kiss of death and I'm amazed how deftly I fling myself backward down a long steep hill, my setter Rose frightened by my unconscious, verbless bellows. Perhaps if I'm dying from some painful disease I'll catch and hold you like Cleopatra's asp to my breast, a truly inventive suicide. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PRINCESS; A MEDLEY by ALFRED TENNYSON THE FAIR THIEF by CHARLES WYNDHAM AFTER SOUFRIERE by KATHERINE HARRIS BRADLEY HIDE AND GO SEEK by HENRY CUYLER BUNNER WORLD MUSIC by FRANCES LOUISA BUSHNELL ON MY BOY HENRY by JANE CAVENDISH TO SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT UPON .. FIRST TWO BOOKS OF GONDIBERT by ABRAHAM COWLEY |