Walt McDonald: In Fields Of Rattlesnakes

|Front Page| |Archive Index| Links|

IN FIELDS OF RATTLESNAKES
I watched it writhe away, dragging a tattoo of diamonds, and wondered how many fangs in a field, how many snakes to an acre? I can't kill them all, so why bother? Some other year we'll meet, alone and on its terms or mine, stick with a loop for its head, or me without boots, jogging in dry July, blinded by backache and sweat, old age a decade away, passing cactus it hides in waiting for mice. I'm no St. Patrick, so snakes will stay on these flat acres longer than goats we feed. Goats graze and whet curved horns and butt each other at the trough, strutting, afraid of nothing, stomping on snakes by the barn, their bony legs like spikes.
WALT McDONALD

IN FIELDS OF RATTLESNAKES

I watched it writhe away,
dragging a tattoo of diamonds,
and wondered how many fangs
in a field, how many snakes
to an acre? I can't kill them all,
so why bother? Some other year
we'll meet, alone and on its terms

or mine, stick with a loop
for its head, or me without boots,
jogging in dry July,
blinded by backache and sweat,
old age a decade away,
passing cactus it hides in
waiting for mice. I'm no St. Patrick,

so snakes will stay on these flat acres
longer than goats we feed.
Goats graze and whet curved horns
and butt each other at the trough,
strutting, afraid of nothing,
stomping on snakes by the barn,
their bony legs like spikes.

WALT McDONALD

Walt McDonald was a U.S. Air Force pilot, taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and is Texas Poet Laureate for 2001. His books include All Occasions (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), Night Landings (Harper & Row, 1989), and After the Noise of Saigon (Massachusetts, 1988). His poems have been in journals including London Review of Books, Orbis, Stand Magazine (UK), The Atlantic Monthly, New York Review of Books, Poetry (USA). This poem first appeared in the printed magazine Writers Forum.

Front Page
Archive Index
Previous Page
Next Page