As I went down the walk

After lunch at home

On my way toward my car,

I looked up to see

The local dark cat

Hunched on the lawn sphinxlike,

Lined up facing right at me

Where I had stopped,

Looking somewhat warily at me  

I thought about the wariness,

That though I wouldn't do anything

To startle let alone threaten the cat

I would be careful to walk by slowly  

As I got to the street

I was somewhat startled to see

A snake slithering away from me

And crossing the street  

I stopped and stood still to look at it,

Wondering if the snake were moving away

In reaction to my presence  

Sure enough, the snake stopped

In the middle of the street

And lifted its head

As if waiting to see what I would do  

I just stood there for a minute

And silently said hello to the snake  

After a while it slithered

The rest of the way across the street  

As I walked the rest of the way to my car

I thought that these two

Back‑to‑back encounters with animals

Was a little coincidental  

I pulled into the local Sunoco station,

The same station where I had

Bumped into Don Hennessey,

A few minutes later

On my way back to work  

As I stopped my car at the pump

And looked up out my window for the attendant

The first eyes that I made contact with

Were those of a poodle

Looking at me out the passenger window

Of the car on the other side of the pump  

I thought that this was even more coincidental    

In the evening

After putting down the new Piers Anthony book,

The fourth volume in The Incarnations of Immortality series,

Which I had started during lunch

And had read more of after work,

I began looking through a beautiful book

Called "Twentieth‑Century Jewelry"   

When I came to the picture of a ring

Roughly coiled in the shape of a snake

I realized the coincidence here

Concerning the snake ring that answers questions

And that can come alive,

Featured in the Piers Anthony book  

Then it dawned on me

That I had had that encounter

With the snake right after lunch