Snakeskin

Clouds thin into form: a hawk

pulling a tail of rings—beads

of an abacus, the mathematics

of light—a lengthening spine,

snakeskin no longer inhabited.

All day I'm giving a name

for what isn't there. Yet somewhere

we've left our likeness, the hollow

shapes of us. Even though the snake

has slipped into the shade,

the shed skin, deceptively whole,

hidden in the sun-flecked grass,

remembers what it once held.