SERPENTINE LINE

by Charles Weld

As Thoreau surveyed, Moore relayed how the fall

before his men, digging sand in a hollow up the hill, 

had uncovered a parcel of snakes, knit loosely, a ball,

half-torpid, striped, and black together. The men killed

them all, then stretched their bodies out head to tail

in a line on the ground and measured it. Several

hundred feet, Moore said. The common practice when

such collections are found, Thoreau noted. The sum

of their lengths related repeatedly—passed on from

farmer to farmer. Numbers have a quality that often

degrades reality, mustering particulars into its army

and moving them through formation and drill until

they’ve lost their edge, that sharp intractability

that eludes orders of magnitude, sequence, and scale.

Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004), and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.), and in many small magazines such as Southern Poetry Review, Evansville Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Concord Saunterer, Friends Journal, Blue Unicorn, Canary, etc. A collection, Seringo, will be published later this year by White Violet Press (Kelsay Books.) He’s worked as an administrator for a nonprofit agency that provides treatment for youth experiencing mental health challenges, and lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.