Today's poem is by Joy Moore

Coral Snake
       

Because in her neck of Florida, she wasn't raised
on tornado drills or water moccasins
        but instead on hurricane precaution
                and how to kill
        coral snakes.
                        In some sense,
        because she'd been waiting forever to spy
those thick-banded stripes of coral, yellow,
black, the slideshows in elementary school,
the legends.
                                        Because it was dark,
a late dinner charring on the grill,
        and she'd gone to check
                if the blood had gone
                out of the burgers and
                                                        because
                beneath the faint moon
        a flash of slick midnight skin slithered
                in the garage's shadow, shy,
        she snatched whatever
                was nearest—
                                        wasp spray—
        aimed and drained the can,
        the snake stunned
        into eerie stillness, and
        with the shovel held high, she severed
                                    its head.

            And only then,
her heartrate and breathing uncoiling,

the stripes revealed not yellow but white,
the head not black but scarlet,
                                                and she shook
        from that
        other poison    that blinds
                in single, certain sight—
        to see what she wanted to see,
                                                                dead set
                                                on being right.

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Copyright © 2023 Joy Moore All rights reserved
from Ecotone
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission