Between me and the clothesline--
a bull snake whose blotches blend with wet dirt and dead leaves. No hiss or fake rattlesnake coil, still-- silly me--I shield myself with a plastic laundry basket. Last summer, I was enthralled by a bull snake in my apple tree. Disguised by the mottled bark, it stretched toward a robin’s nest, and, yes, I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck Eve was thinking. The year before, a pair mated near the garage door, and so much for rural advice, “They eat rats. They eat mice.” I said it twice before the urge took hold to hack them with a rake. Instead, I yelled, “Go get a room at the bullsnake motel!” Even now, there’s an image I cannot erase of the hapless snakes who tainted my space. |
AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |