Rattlesnake Lake Readies for Winter
Foothills bend over the lake
like concerned mothers. Beyond
the hills rattlesnakes lie
curled under dried brush. Some
days, they warm in bleak
patches of sun on granite cliffs.
Fall mornings make even
rattlesnakes long for a blanket of dirt
to cover the rank damp of living.
The thought of rattlesnakes hiding
fills me with a grieving song
like mournful loons crying
for rain. Here where I sit,
rippling lake water
laps against the dock.
One last loon bobs close,
mottled white and black,
feathers aligned in rows
like doomed marching soldiers.
Its brown eye judges from a black
sheen head. A design around its neck,
a rickety fence made of white bones.
The loon’s voice rises from a cemetery,
a haunting call to crows
in the gray overhead. Raucous
crows caw three in a row,
rasps for the year’s death knell.
My blood is too thin for winter,
living so long with coiled
rattlesnakes and tragic loons.
At the salt-stained boat launch
same one we used last
year, when you were here,
I pay a local guy to ferry me
across the passage to Cliff Head.
Same guy. That cider crisp November
afternoon. Still can’t forget.
Tangy air blows a low tide
broth of salt and seaweed.
The bearded boatman slows,
rowing his way over strands
of floating kelp, stopping
on a boulder-strewn shore.
The dark cliff looms ahead
with ancient foreboding.
I didn’t feel it then, erosion
grief when granite meets water.
I climb, grappling with vines to meet
the trail snaking across the cliff top.
A furze of black greenery runs
between stunted shrubs,
twisted and tangled from winter
wind. I stand on the overlook
facing lonely islands on the far
horizon, the blind sparkling bay.
Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, professor of literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work appears in an array of online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, and New Verse News.
Foothills bend over the lake
like concerned mothers. Beyond
the hills rattlesnakes lie
curled under dried brush. Some
days, they warm in bleak
patches of sun on granite cliffs.
Fall mornings make even
rattlesnakes long for a blanket of dirt
to cover the rank damp of living.
The thought of rattlesnakes hiding
fills me with a grieving song
like mournful loons crying
for rain. Here where I sit,
rippling lake water
laps against the dock.
One last loon bobs close,
mottled white and black,
feathers aligned in rows
like doomed marching soldiers.
Its brown eye judges from a black
sheen head. A design around its neck,
a rickety fence made of white bones.
The loon’s voice rises from a cemetery,
a haunting call to crows
in the gray overhead. Raucous
crows caw three in a row,
rasps for the year’s death knell.
My blood is too thin for winter,
living so long with coiled
rattlesnakes and tragic loons.
At the salt-stained boat launch
same one we used last
year, when you were here,
I pay a local guy to ferry me
across the passage to Cliff Head.
Same guy. That cider crisp November
afternoon. Still can’t forget.
Tangy air blows a low tide
broth of salt and seaweed.
The bearded boatman slows,
rowing his way over strands
of floating kelp, stopping
on a boulder-strewn shore.
The dark cliff looms ahead
with ancient foreboding.
I didn’t feel it then, erosion
grief when granite meets water.
I climb, grappling with vines to meet
the trail snaking across the cliff top.
A furze of black greenery runs
between stunted shrubs,
twisted and tangled from winter
wind. I stand on the overlook
facing lonely islands on the far
horizon, the blind sparkling bay.
Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, professor of literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work appears in an array of online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, and New Verse News.
