|
Didelphis Virginiana |
just before bedtime,
barefoot and nightshirted,
cursing an early frost,
i was tipping kitchen trash into
a bin outside the house
when something inside the bin … moved.
time stood still
(no other way to say it)
and ‘zero at the bone’
became real.
survival instinct
put a nearby spade in my hand;
blind panic
drove me to wield it like a shackled convict
digging post holes in blood-red clay
at the height of a southern summer
under the foreman’s rifled gaze.
my victim was silent
(i could have weathered anything but that):
to this day, the briefest stagnation of night air
reanimates that voiceless black and
it is i who cannot scream …
i did not –
could not –
revisit the scene
until daylight
breached my chrysalis of terror.
gingerly peeling back detritus,
i peered into the vinyl abyss
expecting to find, perhaps,
fragments of furry hide or,
at the very least,
a deflated rodent balloon;
i was not prepared for
the infant opossum
which seemed merely to be asleep until
i noticed the gaping crimson crescent
where its right side should have been.
for the record,
i have never liked opossum
(ever since child-i startled one
while climbing a hollow tree and
it hissed me into
acrid saffron self-saturation).
many times since
i have allowed my car to drift toward
a headlight-dazed midnight marsupial,
secretly coveting the satisfying crunch
i knew would follow
of this i am not proud, but
the facts remain.
having been born between wars –
too young for one, too old for another –
i had no referent for
myself as assassin;
this infant rind of mangled fur
had broken, in death,
my steely resolve –
my seething animosity.
compassion and guilt
flooded me,
hollowed me,
and so it is that
twenty years on
i dream the spade untouched –
the creature, whole …
copyright 2019
Rich
Follett |
