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 and s. 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.