Pop of light: I swing the porch door open, startling a coiled snake
that pitches forward beneath black fields and desert stars.

50 years ago, I saw a farm dog kill a rat snake
as it wound beneath lawn chairs under the willow,
dusk fallen; winks of stars pushed day away. Mom screamed;

the dog lunged, sank teeth into the snake’s checkered skin,
and raised and swung it like a 6-foot bat,
slamming it down, a jellied baton, again and again,

to hard summer ground, until it was dead.
I’ll never forget the dog’s frenzy
as the humans grasped their metal chairs, stunned.

Tonight: recalling a boy I loved, I step into the stars—
once he read me Lawrence’s The Snake. I admired
the creature from “the dark door of the secret earth.”

Later, when he dismissed me,
he said “you have too much soul”  

and again tonight, I am back in 3rd grade

catching a green garter like I was playing jacks,
swift grab behind its head—it slipped my hands,
the teacher swept

its chartreuse loveliness out the door, smacked
my palm with a ruler for my secret earth wildness—

and again, tonight, I stand in the open door, arms
stretched wide, under Tucson’s sky haunted by haloed stars—
the snake disappears into the night

and summons underworlds—
my heart breaks into a thousand vessels of light, my tongue
darts vibrating words, possessed by too much soul.

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Whitney Vale, MFA Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University, has essays in Entropy, The Rumpus, Essay Daily, and The Black Fork Review. Poetry includes a chapbook, Journey with the Ferryman (Finishing Line Press) and poems in Gyroscope Review: The Crone Issue, Harpy Hybrid Review, Prospectus: A Literary Offering, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily and other journals, and forthcoming in Quartet. She has been a finalist for the Joy Harjo award, Barry Lopez award, and Minerva Rising’s memoir award.

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