I found a possum skull lodged in the dirt
beneath a shagbark hickory. And so I could not bury
its eyes, or make of its talisman, or place
a thumb from its hind foot in a jar of formalin.
I have been told that the earth is a mother possum
that has died, and we are her kits now out of the pouch
and clinging to her back. It is the clinging I accept.
This morning the wild geraniums and moccasin flowers
are in bloom beneath the sweetgum trees,
though the Caesar's mushrooms are pretending to be in bloom
as well, their bright red caps and orange stems
used in these parts for necromancy. And it is true
the dead speak to us, which I know because I made a reliquary
of shagbark leaves and goat's rue flowers on which to place
the possum skull — a skull strangely weightless and incorporeal
in the palm, the creature's fifty teeth locked in a sad grimace —
and then a few days later while I was standing on my back porch
the possum came waddling from the wood, its moon face
plaintive and otherworldly at twilight, and I knew at once
that what I'd heard was true.