Bert Kessler by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

I winged my bird, / Though he flew toward the setting sun;

But just as the shot rang out, he soared / Up and up through the splinters of golden light, / Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, / With some of the down of him floating near, / And fell like a plummet into the grass.

I tramped about, parting the tangles, / Till I saw a splash of blood on a stump, / And the quail lying close to the rotten roots.

I reached my hand, but saw no brier, / But something pricked and stung and numbed it.

And then, in a second, I spied the rattler --

The shutters wide in his yellow eyes, / The head of him arched, sunk back in the rings of him, / A circle of filth, the color of ashes, / Or oak leaves bleached under layers of leaves.

I stood like a stone as he shrank and uncoiled / And started to crawl beneath the stump, / When I fell limp in the grass.