Psalm to Snake
Margaret Atwood


O snake, you are an argument
For poetry:

a shift among dry leaves
when there is no wind,
a thin line moving through

that which is not 
time, creating time,
a voice from the dead, oblique

and silent. A movement
from left to right,
a vanishing. Prophet under a stone.

I know you're there
even when I can't see you

I saw the trail you make
in the blank sand, in the morning

I see the point 
of intersection, the whiplash 
across the eye. I see the kill.

O long word, cold-blooded and perfect.