Boyle County Snake

In Danville’s quiescent morning
my neighbor knocked—
“I’m Ebony from next door,
I found a snake
and if my husband ever knows
he’ll sell our place and move away.”
I wanted to help
so I took my snow shovel
into summer, and Ebony and I
went behind the house.
Wild, new grass—
tough contractor’s mesh
on a fledgling lawn
where I found a five foot snake
beneath the nets.
Now I knew, in Boyle county, snake
eyes slit like vertical blinds
meant venom, days of pain,
that round eyes
reflect only our own fear
and the faintest rinds of sky.
So I made five shovel stabs
just to break the mesh
and lift the net away.
I cradled the serpent on the shovel,
its mouth opening as if to speak,
body coiling in memory’s thickets.
I carried it to a field of copper grasses
that seemed to stretch forever
behind our homes.
I hoped it would survive—
thin as a thread of moonlight
in the rippling fields.
Walking home,
my morning returned
with that stillborn silence
only small towns have.
Late afternoon clouds plumed in,
unfolding like a spell.
Rains knocked our town,
fattening rings in trees, washing
everything—loose grass, slivered scales
and all the poison we imagined
not the shame we felt,
putting plastic on the lawns,
trapping whatever clings
beside us on the ground.