The Visitor


The opossum waddled into our living room
like an old deacon of a church. She looked up
at our cathedral ceiling as if expecting 
to see the North Star. It was Christmas.
We were in the middle of a fight. I scraped
our dinner plates, crusts of bread clung 
to congealing gravy. I felt my ovaries harden.
 
I told my husband I wasn’t ready to give him
up and I rattled the silver bracelet
with the ten commandments for emphasis. 
I was thinking of the opossum’s hands. 
They were the only graceful thing about her, 
almost human. She pushed open our front 
door to come in, closed it when she left. 
 
Our voices, barely interrupted by this visitor,
rose to a crescendo and I warned him never
to feed her as he had done the raccoon. It's a sin
to feed a wild animal who needs to learn to forage.
 
That winter the snow fell like stars and I made 
a wreath from our woods. Brown acorns became 
the nipples of a man I loved, blue jay feathers 
the dark mystery of my lover’s eyes. 
Our house creaked and drifted with snow. 
 
We survived the cold winter. When I readied 
our garden in spring, my rake hit a chunk 
of what I thought was dirty snow: an opossum 
with a swollen body, engorged from the babies 
she had nursed, her hands frozen palm 
to palm, almost as if in prayer.

-from Luna