Suzanne Cleary

The Beauty

for Gabrielle Freeman

She called it the beauty
and saw it nearly every day

from her attic studio, the snake
sunning itself on top of the stone wall,

all near-six-feet of it shining like black oil,
like a slice of midnight come early

then gone, woven back into summer’s grasses.
But she knew it stayed near,

so the morning she carried her pail to the barn
and found the nests empty,

hens squawking and eggs gone,
she knew it was time

to take beauty into her own hands,
although this proved more a matter

of holding open the empty feed sack
while beauty, untouched, poured itself in.

Biting one end of a rope, she tied the sack tight,
dragged it to her truck, settled it

onto the floor beneath the glove compartment.
How far did she need to drive? Who knew?

Edge of the Blue Ridge she released it,
folded the empty sack over her arms.

Some days she had seen it in the morning,
other days late afternoon, unpredictable

the beauty that sometimes one sees
and sometimes disappears for weeks,

invisible, though it spread itself long and shining
in clear sight, hungry.