Robert A. Miller

Last Day at Lucht’s Farm

Pulling the snake from the stone wall
At the corner of the building
Just before we left the farm
Knowing summer was over
Wanting some memory
Something real from the place
Segmented fat body straining against my child’s strength

And later
In the strictures and stone of the city
In the fish tank, 11 inches by 8
Among rocks and dirt and slender grasses
It lay coiled while I dropped grasshoppers
Around it

Ignoring them
Its arrow shaped head, eyes open,
Weeks later
Unmoving it passed into
Snake heaven
And I lost the last memory of the world

 


Robert A. MillerRobert A. Miller is a journalist, poet, and short story writer. His work has been published in Manhattan Linear, The Writing Self, and Change Magazine, as well as by Holt Rinehart and Winston, and has also appeared in the Albany Times Union. He retired not long ago from New York City’s public television station, WNET, as director of educational publishing. Since then, he has lived in the northern Catskills.

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