Jack Scott writes

A Pet of Poetry

Love, 
a pet of poetry,
now limps within vocabulary 
as, within canebrake, 
aging herpetologist
forsakes rattlesnake 
for safety’s comfort. 
I speak too soon; 
I speak in haste. 
I should speak slowly 
of coming waste: 
- of love, 
- of poetry, 
- of vocabulary. 
There is plenty of rattlesnake.
 
 Conscripted -- Ela Steel