Resting on the Ground with My Love in the Rattlesnake Habitat

She pronounces Chama the name of the milky green river

with a richness in the ch I cannot muster, puts a hard d

on the end of her ands. anD. anD. anD. Like the river

she is asking to be endless anD shifting. To stream.

I’d scouted the knoll of oaks for rattlers, being beyond the bounds

of Coverage having no means to learn their habits.

So I lay down with her on the ground. Their ground. AnD

I willed to forget the cares of my later-in-life job search. Job.

Which is also Job, a man in the Bible. Which is a book.

The oaks of the knoll were leaning into the Chama like girls

washing their hair in basins. I thought of EB shampooing Lota,

of Frost’s birches, of Plath’s Wych elms which I’d like to have

googled. Did snakes favor oak knolls? Did Georgia O’Keeffe worry

about health insurance costs in Abiquiú? AnD beside me my love

streaming, her poodles distantly nosing the chamisa. Standards.

I thought I had them. Put art at the front of the queue

wych is different from quiú. AnD now this. Biblical

the proportions of this breaking-back-into-a-country-I’d-

locked-myself-out-of phase. Was it scenic? I liked

the pachysandra, branches of oak taking all that space

from the sky. But then everybody disappeared to their offices.

Three times I wrote work work work when woke

was what I wanted to write.

Miniature is the acorn

I fingered in the soft flour-sack pocket of my jeans.

Acorn smaller than East Coast or indeed Irish Oak varieties

wych she handed me anD how hungrily I pocketed its little body.