I Watched A Snake

I Watched a Snake

hard at work	 in the dry grass
       behind the house
catching flies. It kept on
       disappearing.
And though I know this has
       something to do

with lust, today it seemed
       to have to do
with work. It took it almost a half
       an hour to thread
roughly ten feet of lawn,
       so slow

between the blades you couldn’t see
       it move. I’d watch
its path of body in the grass go
       suddenly invisible
only to reappear a little
       further on

black knothead up, eyes on
       a butterfly.
This must be perfect progress where
       movement appears
to be a vanishing, a mending
       of the visible

by the invisible—just as we
       stitch the earth,
it seems to me, each time
       we die, going
back under, coming back up…
       It is the simplest

stitch, this going where we must
       leaving a not
unpretty pattern by default. But going
       out of hunger
for small things—flies, words—going
       because one’s body

goes. And in this disconcerting creature
       a tiny hunger,
one that won’t even press
       the dandelion’s down,
retrieves the necessary blue-
       black dragonfly

that has just landed on a pod…
       All this to say
I’m not afraid of them
       today, or anymore
I think. We are not, were not, ever
       wrong. Desire

is the honest work of the body,
       its engine, its wind.
It too must have its sails—wings
       in this tiny mouth, valves
in the human heart, meanings like sailboats
       setting out

over the mind. Passion is work
       that retrieves us,
lost stitches. It makes a pattern of us,
       it fastens us
to sturdier stuff
       no doubt.



Graham, Jorie. “I Watched a Snake.” Erosion, Princeton University Press, 1983.