The Flight

Just seen, running, and silver-gray along the top tube of a fence between myrtles and me, too slinky for a bird and even at this distance unmistakably a quadruped and nimble, some sort of unspoiled animal, but which? It ran as if away from a threat, peril was everywhere, a footsole crunches it, it is mangled by a tire’s treads, hawk scoops it, turkey buzzard pecks at it, no speech mitigates its pains, even the cat fools with it, until, inedible, it is kicked into the gutter. There she goes, the slinky silver-gray Atalanta of reptiles vanishes in no time, for the wind whisks from her feet such tenuous gusts of air — brisk now where turnpikes stretch their webs, and not forever can an earthiness so sweet as this propel such grace. She’ll have got to the mantis eggs by now, at each gulp of hatchling she slowly blinks with satisfaction.