"Possum" by Matthew Wimberly

"Possum Generations" by Caleb Smith

As I go on unnoticed under the clouds

And back onto the logging path

Toward home, I stand at a fork

Beside a rusted vine of barbed wire

Wanting, for whatever reason

(For only a breath) to see myself at seven

Coming upon this spot

Stopping in the same trough of trail,

Eyes looking into a scaffold of trees—

Finding a possum someone strung up

As a warning in a low branch, dead & rotting. I remember

How evenly the skin decayed

Over the jaw

Exposing a wide grin, a laughter—

The body stretched into the outline of sorrow

A broken branch stabbed through

Its side. Dust & fur shed from vertebrae

In summer’s flat light

When I knew little of death—

Only the color it made of bones,

Opaque claws turning turquoise

Before being changed altogether

Into slivers of smoked glass.

And the naked tail

Stiff and furless

Was not terrible & grotesque

But (became beautiful)

A fine lace spun in the wind

The body untouchable

As the night sky.

Always there would be

Something in the bend of that shagbark—

A recess carved from memory

(Where the animal eroded—

A smile unchanged for months.)

I walk ahead until in the distance my porch light

Casts a glow, whorling against the fog

Like a lullaby to no one.

It’s almost winter

Frost covers the wooden steps.

Overhead the constellations are recognizable.

I can hold them one at a time

On the flat of my hand—

Light years scaled down

Across my knuckles.