Audio: Read by the author.
The four-and-a-half-foot black-backed rat snake swayed
up and across the kitchen screen door, seeking
a way in. Encountering, instead,
our eyes, it slowly, deliberately, withdrew
to slide across the stone porch, over the wall, and along
the foundation, inspecting every crevice,
feeling, nosing, listening its way
toward a solution, which it found
around the corner, up the back flagstone steps,
where it squeezed its impossible length and girth, inch by
patterned inch, into the crack beneath the topmost slate. So
we know we’re living with a patient
companion, like you, inquisitive. You sit
taut in your chair, whispering, as you probe
the gaps between prime numbers. Until infinity.
It’s pattern you seek. The opening through which
your thought will glide suddenly into a lit space
and be at home. In a shaky house, where wasps gnaw the walls.
