Poetry: From the May/June 2009 issue | See all poetry
Snake Crossing
But not even a sign could save you.
When one of your kind tries to cross
the road—no matter how close, it seems,
you are to one side or the other—
some car seems bound to make straight
your sinewy motion, and someone,
I imagine, looks back
over his or her shoulder, as satisfied
to have gotten you as they might be
to cross some task off their to-do list,
or to fix that one thing they believed
was always wrong with their lives.
