
Stealing the warmth of gravel
an inch at a time, famished
after winter’s long dream
of what’s on the menu:
blind hatch appetizers
or a full-grown squeeze.
https://drycrikjournal.com/2021/09/04/tight-squeeze/
Stealing the warmth of gravel
an inch at a time, famished
after winter’s long dream
of what’s on the menu:
blind hatch appetizers
or a full-grown squeeze.
https://drycrikjournal.com/2021/09/04/tight-squeeze/
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged Gopher Snake, native community, photographs, poetry, springtime
Always a hole in the law,
in the black sky where the March moon
bores into your mind,
along the borders
between you and Nature
tirelessly encroaching.
She lives in town, the nurse
taking my blood pressure,
wants to know about the moths
driving her inside the house
with her kids
on the block of last night’s shooting.
I can’t imagine trying to sleep in a city.
First 80-degree day,
surrounded by colorful pastures
of wildflowers, thigh-high,
we can feel the snakes
crawling out of hibernation—
even the dogs are cautious,
as they check last year’s beds
dug in the shade of the deck.
The ebb and flow of skirmishes,
prey and predator, man and beast
until the end of time.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged Gopher Snake, human nature, nature, spring
Posted in Haiku 2021, Photographs
Tagged constriction, Gopher Snake, ground squirrel, haiku
…what you’re going to find in a haystack.
This five-foot gopher snake ‘on the move’ took my breath away yesterday afternoon as I loaded hay from the barn.
With apparent interest, judging by the comments, I’ve added this photograph of the gopher snake poking its head in a Black Phoebe’s nest of mud about ten feet up the vertical stack of hay bales. The nest has been empty for quite awhile. The snake knew just where it was and I suspect the Black Phoebe decided to move to another zip code.