Cottonmouth Country

(I commented on Chandlers and Brittany Burkleys Blog)
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other sighns
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.
-Louise Gluck

To me this poem is talking about the chances we take in life and how sometimes those chances seem like we are tempting fate, flirting with death. We continue on this path until death comes for us. Its sudden and quick- usually, but that doesnt make it any easier on the ones that loose us because of death it makes it the hard loss. The structure of this poem is different. It has sudden breaks in the line and isnt a very long poem which further creates the allusion to me of a sudden quick death. I also find it interesting that a cottonmouth is mentioned in this poem since it is a snake and most people are afraid of snakes and of their deathly bite.