Cottonmouth Country

Cottonmouth Country by Louise Gluck

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
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.

So first I noticed that the poem is one stanza that consists of eight lines. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcd. One thing that that I saw was that "Death" is captialized. So maybe the author did this to show how dominat death is in this country.
Another thing that stuck out to me was the "I know." in the last line. It follows "Birth, not death, is the hard loss." So for me the "I know." says that the statement before is true with no exceptions.