American Life in Poetry: ‘Snakeskin’ by Stephen Behrendt

This past autumn, pruning a big lilac bush, I found a snakeskin that some bird had woven into its nest. Here’s a poem about another find from Stephen Behrendt, who lives and teaches in Nebraska. His most recent book is “Refractions,” from Shechem Press.

Snakeskin

Pruning back the old spirea bushes

that sprawled for years in summer’s heat,

I bared the snake skin, a yard and a half long:

its naked empty length rippled in the streaming wind

lifting its ghostly coils from the dead shoots

that scraped the slough from the slithering body

that shed it in that narrow, shaded space.

I paused—who wouldn’t?—shears poised,

slipped off gray canvas gloves, extracted

the sere, striated casing from the brown stalks

that had held it, silent, hidden.

I coiled the paper-thin curling sheath with care,

delicately, eased it into a simple squatty box

for keeping, for care, for my daughters

to take to school, to show, to explain

how some sinuous body we’ve never glimpsed,

that haunts about our shrubs, our porch,

left for us this translucent, scale-scored wrapper,

this silent hint of all that moves unseen.

Poem copyright 2014 by Stephen C. Behrendt, from “Refractions” (Shechem Press, 2014), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.