Love it! Thanks. Send flowers to Italy
Possum after possum strewn along
the mountain road, their guts strung out
like red flags signaling danger, danger
to their unlettered kin. So many I lost count
or no longer noticed, as if I walked past
petals scattered from wind-battered camellias.
But today at the children’s zoo, I watched
a possum poke her white face from her nest,
its doorway wrapped for freezing nights
in bright blue and pink fleece, the colors
in which we swaddle our young, watched her tug
the blue one draped over her head to wind it
over her face, then tuck herself back into her nest
for her long day’s sleep. Outside the wire,
I stood and mourned at last all her lost kin,
their sharp canny faces,
keen eyes dazzled by the terrible light.
Volume 45, no. 2, 2017