And if you can bear with me for another rattlesnake poem,
it's strange, isn't it?
How when you see a snake, most of us
have this reaction to want to kill it.
I think this is built into human beings probably
part of our survival instinct.
But I killed this rattlesnake and felt quite badly about it
afterwards.
Maybe I'm working off guilt by reading the poem, I don't know.
"Rattlesnake."
We killed him with heavy rocks, clawing
them out of the dirt with the tips of our fingers,
frantic and red faced in the heat,
throwing them badly worse than boys,
until we use the heaviest ones, compensating for our aim
by weights and numbers, and finally, crushed his head.
I remember how he was crossing the road, in a straight line,
fat with a mouse and 14 rattles.
But at the first blow made an instant stand to die,
how his excellent body hammered up breaking his mouth
on the boulders we threw.
And how he fought, blind, broken open in three places,
head bitterly erect, until we smashed his brain
and he died twitching, slow as the stub of a candle.
And even then we were afraid to touch him, he was so potent.
And drove away in our cars.