THE SNAKE

It must be poisonous, said Jorge,

As we watched my nephew beating

The garden snake furiously

As if to no one in particular;

Certainly not to my nephew

Who was almost done with the job,

The cat had found the snake,

Had asserted its curtness on it,

Biting its length many times and

Hurling it up twice his height;

Then would let the snake go still alive

For another chase through the weeds.

Ow my nephew is done with it

With the stick he used for killing

He lifts the snake’s limp body, brown

And gray, no big snake really,

Like a line or string which happens

To fall across the day’s path.

With the same stick my nephew

Lets fly the snake into the low

Growing bushes, just once the sun

It caught on its white underbelly

Before it disappears from out view;

I should get a pair of boots, Jorge says.