Los más leídos ▸
Dave Bonta
Click, clack says my walking stick,
& the soft buzz of a rattlesnake
shivers from the rock.
You go for water & bring back a strange new lover:
that’s how it is in the tales the old wives
used to roll between their palms.
One long noodle of clay made a bowl, a mirror
you could drink from. Coiling or uncoiling,
something always gets loose.
I winged my bird,
Though he flew toward the setting sun;
But just as the shot rang out, he soared
Up and up through the splinters of golden light,
Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled,
With some of the down of him floating near,
And fell like a plummet into the grass.
I tramped about, parting the tangles,
Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump,
And the quail lying close to the rotten roots.
I reached my hand, but saw no brier,
But something pricked and stung and numbed it.
And then, in a second, I spied the rattler—
The shutters wide in his yellow eyes,
The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him,
A circle of filth, the color of ashes,