The whip snake came
looking for black-throated sparrows
in the cholla,
twisting her braided scales
around the palo verdes
and catclaws.
She was nervous, though, and hungry,
and it was nearing night.
She didn’t notice
the minor shift on the limb
of a grandaddy saguaro,
so busy was she hissing and striking
at anything that moved,
mouth gaping like a blood red tulip.
A quick and seasoned cactus wren,
with irises glittering and peeled on the scrub below,
shuttled her brood
into their own sleepy hollow
in the arm of the saguaro—
and tipclawed out again
to watch the night feast.
Silent horseman of the desert,
the great horned owl, swooped
and gripped that whip
like a coachman
severing the spine in his talon.
Mrs. Wren Marple thought to herself,
I didn’t even have to miss Fallon!
I’m always in the wrong place at the right time—
I saw all this before Law & Order at nine!
© 2025 Jennifer Wagner
For Shay’s Word Garden Word List
And that’s a wrap, folks! Thirty poems in 30 days for National Poetry Month were sometimes a heavy task, even for an armchair detective, so today I had to go light!
