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Opossums

Published onDec 09, 2024
Opossums
·

Opossums


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

Rebecca Baggett is the author of the prize-winning collection, The Woman Who Lives Without Money (Regal House Publishing, 2022) and four chapbooks, including God Puts on the Body of a Deer (Main Street Rag) and Thalassa (Finishing Line Press). Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Asheville Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, Salt, and The Sun. She lives with her husband, Elmer Clark, in Athens, GA, where she stewards Little Free Library #110,420, plants native habitat over her quarter-acre, and rejoices in her four-year-old grandson.


Comments
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Maria Treviso:

Love it! Thanks. Send flowers to Italy