Memorial

Dave Smith

Today on the 17th fairway I stepped over

the gutted, dried out corpse,

not quite the length of my arm once,

now more papery shell than any

fish, and yet moccasin still.

The triangular head had been halved,

a six-iron maybe, swung without thought.

Twisting tongue gone into this grass

making for the pond maybe,

that was gone too, the way words go

when we open our mouth

and try to remember what we have done.

So little of it all really matters.

Sunlight poured down its free admiration,

a scale here and there gleamed

as if a nerve had been touched again,

so we stood off even as we bent our backs

to understand more. You know, don't

you, our brains were saying, they will bite

you even when they are dead? But

look how there was an eye, a beauty.

Braided and subtle was what covered

this rippling, this surge to go over

to the side it couldn't see,

turning as the planet does, slow, sure.

Instant by instant it must have

blinked, tasted, filled itself with knowing

it would have to kill some things

to get where the future would be better.

Sometimes it would lie in the grass,

rain falling with its voice of approval,

but always the thump and rumble.

Until the dark, and then endless sun

its body would hold like a scaled straw.