"Path of A Possum" by Gordon Marshall

Illustration by Samantha Scott-Heron



VI

So Jennifer nests
Waiting for her midwife
In Maine,

Watching the St. George flow,
Flow like democracy
Through a hobbled union

Switchback path of pebbles
Knotted with nettles,
Fire ants feeding on flesh

By the fire pit
Where she plays her guitar
In summer,

Farmhouse and cows
Visible across the banks,
Between which seals frolic

When the tide rises
Watering up the muddy flow
Up and inland.

Jen waits for the tides to flow
Fluids from the embryo,
Into life.

She hears the songs she wrote
Writing the songs her child will write,
Singing in her cradle

By the immense sunlight
Of her bedroom window
As the hawk in the glass

Marks the seasons,
Summer to spring
Winter to fall

Falling like this fall
When the Rove empire falls
And the Black revolution rises

Ringing in the chants of the field
And the blues,
And the rhythm of the chain gang

Changing the clothes of the babes
From stripes and straitjackets
To doctoral gowns

To mark the education of the soul
In new colors of thought
Blind colors of thought,

Blind as a newborn baby
Seeing only shadow moving
Like trees…

The trees well up with birdsong,
Like Charlie Parker Bird song,
Cutting through alleys in Harlem

Where crows chew up the rats
Like cats chew up the rats
Lick the luscious

Pockets of blood
Beneath the fur
And purr

Or the cats in country Maine
Who climb up the couch
And lick young Celia’s face

Like they lick Malia’s face
In Chicago—
Or Sasha’s,

Who slapped the vice president’s hand
Her fifth cousin, in a high five,
In 2005.