Rattlesnake In My Gut Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Rattlesnake in my gut:
Coiling: milky, pregnant, eating the grapes like small
Venison:
How long will it take you to exist, or cease to exist,
Rubbing your pearly belly like bragging up against
All of my scars:
And other kids who have all fallen in or out of
High school,
While the cars just putter on the asphalt underneath the cooling
Religions of the rain;
And the classes behind them left unfinished, the clay beautiful
But unripenned without the foresight of the kiln:
The post office red but unread- almost bankrupt,
But in the midnight of its straying, the elk come in through
The simple crossroads,
Stumbling, sniffing the fresh paint, and scarring the façade
With the insatiable needs of their antlers:
The feral crowns of earlier metamorphosed kings:
While the highways of the state lie newly languid, cool and
Basking,
And the horses across their ventures stand as still as statues,
Having already eaten the resilient presence of the wildflowers
In that outstanding valley in which, later, I was all but made.