I practice calling up the past for reassurance.
That events outlast themselves. That a day
of no great personal gain or loss inscribes itself
somewhere. The way I keep in my mind
two snakes entwined and falling
to my feet as I walked under an oak tree
one July. The way I ran down the hill
as if the snakes cared enough to chase me.
The way that moment stalks me, its tongue
flickering even now as I pass under certain
boughs and fear or feel a thud
of what’s not there, which twists
around what is: the air, the leaves,
the roots that weave in and out of the mud,
serpentine and mingling with the past
to make a rain of snakes forever
possible. I need to believe that ordinary
trees—from which no bodies fall—
can leave an imprint, furrow my brain with their
forgettable gray branches in the middle of winter,
all the leaves having already dropped from them.