The Encounter The day the snake flailed off the gutter stood on its tail weaving for holds it distracted us each from the other and brought us closer, you with the broom jabbing it clear, me at a distance, lured and repelled in love with its movement its alien face its perfect design. It dropped and poured behind the steps. My mind absorbed the prisms of its scales, mosaic back, its fear, repeated by my own. We waited for the snakeman barefoot with the casualness of one who knows his snakes. He plucked and bagged the roiling coils, those diamonds…