Yesterday I walked with a friend to the beach at Tennessee Valley.  Though I was there ten days ago, it was completely different.  Part of it was the light, filtered through a cold wind, but, also, despite rain, the creek had slowed, and it was possible to cross without taking off one’s shoes.   

Also, the willows had filled in and the landscape was denser with plants.  We didn’t see a bobcat but we did see a long, brown snake slithering into the path for warmth from the sun.

Snake paused when we paused so I saw he was harmless with his thin neck and sliver of a tail.  I was reminded of Stanley Kunitz’s wonderful poem “The Snakes of September”.  He writes of hearing snakes in the shrubbery all summer long, but then with autumn’s chill, he sees two of them, “dangling head-down entwined in a brazen love-knot”. The poem continues:

I put out my hand and stroke

the fine dry grit of their skins.

After all, 

we are partners in this land,

co-signers of a covenant.

At my touch the wild

braid of creation

trembles.