The Snake in the Grass

The Snake in the Grass Karen Petersen First there was the delicate snakeskin,like tissue paper, a foot long and ghostly white.Touch it and it crumbles, a tokenof a potential deadly resurrection,fittingly done in moonlight,a warning sign of things to come. A sudden revelation in the morning's grassthe snakeskin betrays the snake,quiet, private, impossible to detect,this hidden cold-blooded arrow of deathtakes its victim's last breath, a gaspin the terrible silence. And just before the sacrament of the strikebeneath the now unbalanced clouds,one hears "the whole desolate, final reality"of a hiss beneath the shroud.Then quickly, quickly the venom worksand the world, ineffable, spins right again. [End Page 106]