Again, getting back to California, as I said,
we were in somewhat of a rural area,
I'm sure it's all concrete now, but there
was the remnants at least of a farm where
some people kept their horses.
And I used to hang around there every once in a while.
And there was a woman there, a transplant from Texas, an older
woman, and I used to get her to tell me some tales about what
Texas was like when she was a little girl,
very interesting lady.
And she told me once that her brother was out in the field
with her daddy, his foot went through the ground
into a rattlesnake den and of course, he
got bit rather badly.
Well, they brought the--
his daddy put the boy in the wagon
and they drove like mad back to the ranch house
and they put the boy's leg in a bucket of kerosene.
And she said you could see the green venom coming
out and floating in the pail.
I don't know if this is true or not.
But anyway, then the father went back with a shovel
to the rattlesnake den and found this large hole
filled full of rattlesnakes.
Well, again, this story boiled around in my head for a while
and out came the poem called "Incident."
Dragged from the wagon before the mules had stopped,
the father now a quick Jack and the boy cortex dead
slumped in his arms, 3 blinks to the house
where they waited, having heard his rattle, the lash of rains
thrown against the sun.
They put his leg in kerosene, watch the green leg curl where
the tooth was, a scum twisting to the top of the pail,
still watch the leg, the slumped boy.
Its runners spreading across the floor testing the cracks,
climbed the walls until turning filled the room with itself.
Meanwhile, the young doctor arrived at this,
his first case of nature.
Outside, stood amazed at foliage bulging the windows.
And the father having gone back with a foot
lurched through, dug the molds burrow,
heard fangs against the shovel, struck,
found another and another, and probing the cavern
saw how it extended, how it was full of them twined
in the tunnels, feeders, rooms, spreading spreading, palmately
under the ground.