Boom Town
Into any sound important
a snake puts out its tongue;
so at the edge of my hometown
every snake listened.
And all night those oil well engines
went talking into the dark;
every beat fell through a snake,
quivering to the end.
This summer, home on a visit,
I walked out late one night;
only one hesitant pump, distant,
was remembering the past.
Often it faltered for breath
to prove how late it was;
the snakes, forgetting away
through the grass,
had all closed their slim mouths.
William Stafford
Posted over on William Stafford Archives
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