swimming above a crowd of clumsy divers that flop from the jumping rock
while I wade the river, inner tube lost to bow-cut rapids with lain down trees
where I find a snake below the surface painting its face with sun. Streaked red
from climbing the steep, clay bank barefoot, I smell like the water—like childhood
where fishing camps still hang on to their pilings over bayou mud beds seeded
with a colony of rusted cans waiting to slice a swimmer’s foot in the tide of warm salt
water and minnow shiners nosing for a feast. It is late June and the bottomland is sop
from evening rain, but sapling-rich where I’m drawn out of the shade. The snake’s eyes
are iridescent engine oil, still. Uncoiled underwater along an elm limb, scales ripened
yellow-black like bells of alligator pear on a windowsill. Snakes have the softest hands
in their next life, and they are teased for it. I think you know that already, having seen it
in the rotation of shifting from spirit to daughter to mother to memory and what we have
here now—the hammered shine I hold my breath then snatch at—but the snake turns
to branch bark—is no spirit at all. My hands rough and empty. My memories wasted
in the river. Do you see that I’ve forgotten how you told me not to reach out?
