A Narrow Fellow In The Grass

Yellow Rat Snake

 

I always loved this poem by Emily Dickinson, and think it really evokes that shiver down the spine feeling you get when you glimpse a snake gliding by, even when  you love them like I do, and know it is a harmless species.  Still, they are animals of graceful mystery and they never fail to stop me in my tracks for a moment, with a slight quickening of my heartbeat.  Or as Miss Dickinson referred to it, “…tighter breathing and zero at the bone.”

Hope some of you enjoy this:

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides--
You may have met Him--
did you not
His notice sudden is--

The Grass divides as with a Comb--
A spotted shaft is seen--
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on--

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn--
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot--
I more than once at Noon

Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone--

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me--
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality--

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--*

            Emily Dickinson