BrooksLooks@ Snake in the Road

Snake in the Road

it started with a garter snake
flattened in the street
the harmless little garden kind
whilst squished, was rather neat

“they’re the good ones” people quip
“they couldn’t ever hurt”
like the big fat slithery black ones
down there in the dirt

let them go their merry way
in the herpetological code
but it’s open season on the highway
when they’re stretched across the road

in Appalachia
them copperheads can make someone think twice
the poison ones come at ‘ya
them timber rattlers ain’t half as nice

but out in Arizona
the snakes have all turned pro
so you better watch out, out there
if that’s where yer plannin’ to go

see there’s twenty kinds of diamondbacks
that stare out of those rocky cracks
and that lightnin’ fast Mojave kind
say your prayers when one attacks

sonoran racers and whip snakes
are colorful and mellow
but a coral snake bite is all it takes
‘cause “red and yellow kills a fellow”

it’s a queasy kind of feeling though
for even a ranch-worn drover
who sees a diamondback with tire tracks
when his pickup runs one over

there ain’t no moral to the tale
when it comes to deadly snakes
avoid ’em on the trail fer sure
on the road avoid them brakes

© Copyright 2014 Brooks Bradbury / BROOKS LOOKS

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s