All summer I heard them <br />rustling in the shrubbery, <br />outracing me from tier <br />to tier in my garden, <br />a whisper among the viburnums, <br />a signal flashed from the hedgerow, <br />a shadow pulsing <br />in the barberry thicket. <br />Now that the nights are chill <br />and the annuals spent, <br />I should have thought them gone, <br />in a torpor of blood <br />slipped to the nether world <br />before the sickle frost. <br />Not so. In the deceptive balm <br />of noon, as if defiant of the curse <br />that spoiled another garden, <br />these two appear on show <br />through a narrow slit <br />in the dense green brocade <br />of a north-country spruce, <br />dangling head-down, entwined <br />in a brazen love-knot. <br />I put out my hand and stroke <br />the fine, dry grit of their skins. <br />After all, <br />we are partners in this land, <br />co-signers of a covenant. <br />At my touch the wild <br />braid of creation <br />trembles.<br /><br />Stanley Kunitz<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-snakes-of-september/
