Part V: Snakes – (Chapter 90)

On the Denver to L.A. leg of my trip, I try putting Bobby Kennedy’s shooting out of my mind.

I scan some Emily Dickinson poems from the volume Mr. Kirk, my high school English teacher, has given me. He was right; her work is accessible, but it’s still poetry, and I can only read one poem before switching to lighter reading, like the latest Newsweek, which has a story on the California primary, speculating that if Bobby wins, he stands a good chance of winning the nomination and the presidency.

So much for conventional wisdom and all that happy horse shit.

I toss the magazine into my travel bag and grab Emily again.

Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson, c. early 1847. It is located
in Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.

A poem catches my eye:

 

A narrow fellow in the grass

Occasionally rides;

You may have met him, – did you not?

His notice sudden is.

 

The grass divides as with a comb,

A spotted shaft is seen;

And then it closes at your feet

And opens further on.

 

What does this mean, a poem about snakes? Ugh, I hate snakes, those creepy, slimy things. Sometimes, you’d see them down by the Missouri, slithering on a sandbar or hanging from a tree. Then one would drop in front of you, almost in your hair. I think they did it on purpose. It was the only thing I hated about exploring the riverbank.

Creepy.

Snakes make me think of that awful place where I lived when I was four years old...

Family photo of the author (age 4) with an AI overlay