The Girl Who Buried Snakes in a Jar

She came to see the bones whiten in a summer, and one year later a narrow mummy with a dusty skin and flaking scales would break apart in her hand. She wanted to see if sunlight still glinted in those eyes, to know what it lighted from a window on the mallow roots, leaf mold and fallen casques. And to ask if a single tongue, one forked flicker in the dark, had found any heat in death: in the closed space and chill of that burial, what speech, what sign would there be. She who walked in the canyon early, parted the grass and halted upon the living snake, coiled and mottled by a bitter pool, unearthed her jar in another spring, to find the snake spirit gone, only a little green water standing, some dust, or a smell. (1974)