image by Casey Barber
Under the luminous moon
of the equinox, I travel this
quiet New England byway.
Behind me, a small possum sits
in a twist of brush and bramble.
She’s praising Something
– herself, fate, or God -
for running the gauntlet
of my tires; how she did it
is a question for minds
bigger than hers or mine.
Yet I’ve told her story out of turn:
First were frantic breaths
and heaving tremors
as she recalled her maze of terror:
the swirling black teeth,
the cold asphalt on her pads,
the shocking graze of metal against
her coarse coat.
.
It's a shame that possums
are solitary animals.
No one was there, watching
wide-eyed and breathless;
No one was there, applauding
the blind luck and dumb moves
that got her to the other side.
I drive on.
North of me, at the end of another road,
a dark sentinel gazes into blackness;
where horizon meets the sea,
Cadillac Mountain waits for the sun.
I return.
It's pre-dawn, fourth of July;
you slumber in your sleeping bag
as I pass under festive banners
on my way to the trail.
I stumble up the mountain
to wait for the sunrise, my soul
bounding and rebounding
against your world’s low atmosphere.
I arrive in the final opaque moments;
others are here too:
in pairs in groups in close proximity.
We wait, and I wrap my arms
around myself.
There was nothing I could do
to stop that certain light;
the urge to bolt seized like a spasm,
and I tumbled across, blind and careless,
careening into coldness,
into tangle, into truth.
No one saw me when I crossed over;
the clapping I heard was not for me,
but for the first rind of light that sent
shimmers across the waters.
I sat, far into the new day,
breathing the air
and blinking at the light.
That night,
while everyone watched fireworks,
I embraced Independence Day.
