What looks like a downed palm tree
on my night beach walk
down to the water’s edge
in my quiet seaside town

is actually a python facing the sea,

 
taller than me, tail toward the dunes.
A couple walks toward me from the north
very slowly: “I’ve never seen a snake that big.
“What kind is it? Australian?”

 
A slim, shirtless man
gazes at the dark shape
as I approach, transfixing
the snake, triangle head lifted,

 
as if the man is saying something so important
the snake can’t bear to miss a word – what
is he saying? Don’t kill the strangers? –
while I’m now on my hands and knees

 
frantically crab-crawling the sand,
up a dune, too terrified to stand
upright. In the dark I’d thought
I saw fronds waving, maybe driftwood.

 
Closer, I’d seen a snake the color of a melted
Creamsicle on a thick white body.
When I tell my neighbor Tish –
while Frosty, a neighbor cat in our tri-plex,

 
pads behind her, besotted
with Tish, drunk with petting –
“snake, snake, there’s a snake on the beach!”
Tish says the owner’s

 
just letting the python
stretch.
She’s calm as Frosty,
as if snakes are turtles,

 
the air alcoholic as she jogs
barefoot down the boardwalk
to take a look, Frosty tagging
along, the size of a python snack.

 
I imagine the python cooped
up in one of the nearby
concrete homes, body twisted
round and round to fit in that square

 
box, TV voices in the background
air conditioner hum, mold
in the corners because honestly who
is going in there to clean?

 
Rodents flung in daily, bulging him up.
In mythology a python
is always a monster born from
mud given tasks,

 
eating deer raccoons alligators.
A crow caws alarm,
lions and tigers
can overpower a python but

 
here we have a spindly
man who keeps him as a pet,
this outing a kind of walk like
letting the dog out.