Of his childhood in Saginaw, Michigan, where his German grandfather and father kept greenhouses, Theodore Roethke wrote that this greenhouse world represented for him "both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German-Americans turned their love or order and their terrifying efficiency into something truly beautiful."
In his poem "Snake," Roethke does just this: He turns something terrifying into something beautiful. As one of his nature poems, "Snake" explores some of the anxiety that was with Roethke since his childhood. But, the power of Nature to revive the spirit of an adult life in self-realization is the theme of this poem.
The sight of the young snake gliding "Out of the mottled shade," which can be a metaphor for Roethke's anxieties, halts the poet, who watches the reptile. This snake is perceived as "a thin mouth and a tongue" that is "stayed" in the still air. But, after its limp pause upon a stone, it turns, draws away, and quickly is gone.
The sensuousness of the snake--the poet's "slow blood...longed to be that thing"--revives the man, giving him encouragement that he, too, can have relaxation and enjoy life: "And, I may be, some time." The poet realizes that he can experience release from his anxieties.
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