Wish

From the great meaty boils of wintering burrows

rattlers stir, shudder, & unspool. Stunned blind

they slip & essingly spill

down yellow hills, forked tongues

tasting the gravel road’s good heat—

& there, on blue quartz, on schist,

on the cat’s eyes of agates & the rocked remains

of ancient, oceanic brethren, they coil

into thick, rippling rings, wedge heads

roosting on the oozeful thrones of snakebellies.

A whole road of them. Curled here,

curled there, waiting for the blood

to hiss & rise, the body’s whip to willingly

unloop & lick a strike. They wait & praise

the face of the sun, the white fact of it

like some child’s warm, enormous,

still-good god. Oh, I’d drive like the devil,

fast & swervy, popping snakes

beneath my tires. I could feel each small thump

thwunk up through my spine—

in the rearview then a dusty ribbon

of red-pocked road. It was as easy

as a wish, a prayer. The way—

hands on the black wheel, foot mashed

to the rust-bitten floorboard—I prayed the sky

might stumble, the rain fall, & the river fill

to the goddamn brim. That my mother

might love the living like she did the dead. Oh,

all that was a long time ago. I have prayed

those wishes down. Today, I hold

my son close, as we kneel in lashings

of rusty grass, watch a quick, dappled snake

slip into this other river.