- What am I waiting for?
- Why not now?
- What holds me back?
- When?
The Black Snake
by Mary Oliver
When the black snake
flashed onto the morning road,
and the truck could not swerve—
death, that is how it happens.
Now he lies looped and useless
as an old bicycle tire.
O stop the car
and carry him into the bushes.
He is as cool and gleaming
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet
as a dead brother
I leave him under the leaves
and drive on, thinking
about death: its suddenness,
its terrible weight,
its certain coming. Yet under
reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune.
It says to oblivion: not me!
It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
happily all spring through the green leaves before
he came to the road.
—from Twelve Moons (1979) and collected in
New and Selected Poems, Volume One (1992) Beacon Press