Hunting Snake

(Judith Wright)

Sun-warmed in this late seasons grace under the autumns gentlest sky we walked, and froze half-through a pace. The great black snake went reeling by. Head down, tongue flickering on the trail he quested through the parting grass, sun glazed his curves of diamond scale and we lost breath to see him pass. What track he followed, what small food fled living from his fierce intent, we scarcely thought; still as we stood our eyes went with him as he went.

Cold, dark and splendid he was gone into the grass that hid his prey. We took a deeper breath of day, looked at each other, and went on

The poems meaning

Judith Wright was born in Australia in 1915, and lived in that country until her death in 2000; she was intensely fond of the countryside and all that it meant to those who lived there, especially the Aboriginal people, and much of her writing also celebrates natural creatures. She once said of her own life and poetry that the two threads of my life, the love of the land itself and the deep unease over the fate of its original people, were beginning to twine together, and the rest of my life would be influenced by that connection Although Hunting Snake is clearly about a snake that the poems speaker once saw, and about the fear and awe that it created in her, it may also perhaps be read as hinting at other aspects of ancient Australian life. The last two lines of the poem may perhaps be suggesting something of the contrast between an ancient way of life, the new ways that the poet feels and lives in, and the fact that while the two may sometimes meet they cannot co-exist in reality.