I swerved for a possum last night,
the thing I told my children I would never do.
They rang out like sirens:
Why did you swerve?
How to say that we are all
of these stars, that I want
the suffering I cause to be less
than the raindrops on the fern fronds
outside their fog-blurred windows,
that each of us must find
some way to be different
in this malignant world.
The silence they left behind was
the echo of eons, some cold calculation
to remain on this planet
for as long as possible.
The possum moved on westward.
The lot of us pressed into that bleak
tomorrow beneath the same stars.
How many promises have been built upon
the scaffolding of those stars, how many
hearts ransacked by the brute thief of dawn?
I wanted this poem to be
about love.
JOSEY’s work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Glimmer Train, Passages North, CutBank, and elsewhere. When they’re not writing, Josey manages a company dedicated to all things VW campers. This life is a wild adventure in so many ways. @jadjosey
