Rattlesnake Hill
RATTLESNAKE HILL
Meshoppen Township, Pennsylvania
Every high summer has a magical day
when the forests and fields are impossibly
green, bathed sun-up to sundown in a
yellow-gold light made lazily kinetic by
high-soaring hawks, busy beavers and bees,
the ever-cautious deer, the shadow of the bear
The music from the kitchen is “Samba Para Ti”
somehow softly Santana in the early afternoon
where community names like Meshoppen,
Dark Hollow, Mehoopany, Black Walnut,
Tunkhannock and South Auburn are a tapestry
of stories over steep, rolling land
where a young married couple gathers hay on our
hill, from their tractor and wagon a wave and a
smile, their two mixed-breed dogs are loyal and loping
and part of the team and this grateful community
celebrating the sounds and the tangled choreography
of hunting and mating, of nurturing and feeding,
of farming and family in our forested ridges of
feathers and fur, the Susquehanna River full of webbed
feet and fins; my wife in the meadow, her mid-summer
aura of honey on ivory accented with red, talking to
the grasses, to the birds, to the trees, the sounds of
spirit voices, something sacred in the breeze
On the porch of the farmhouse, I sit, an aging
man at ease, feeling blessed and content, watching
Nature’s conversations with her sun-drenched
creations on the bountiful, beautiful, fertile
green slopes of Rattlesnake Hill
Emanuel Carter
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