Your spirit will need to rest after it is cleaned
       

The skunk has taken residence under
the house—sprays often, when the dog barks,
when we run the vacuum cleaner, when
the footsteps of our quarantine pass overhead.
So much frightens it. I saw it this morning
lumbering along the driveway; pregnant,
the skunk is pregnant, which makes me reconsider
my previous plan: To locate someone
willing to brave the virus and remove
this skunk from its bower below my kitchen
sink. What changes? Ten days in lockdown.
I pass the time like Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole,
rapt before my many ethereal screens,
filled now with postcard sized faces. We
talk and talk about the emergency. Today,
I turn off the devices. I sit out on my deck
under the flowering wisteria, branches twisting
sensuously in a high wind that may turn
to tornado. Let the skunk be safe. Let me learn to live
with its animal smell in my nostrils—familiar
signal of fear, longing. Let me hold in my hand
a few grains of soil, pat them around the base
of this wisteria here, which springs form a hole
someone sawed in the deck—almost too tight
to breathe, but it does. I can smell its colors—
the bunches of violet blossom, dew, and the warmth
of sun they hold. Let me praise the miracle—
how far the light must travel to be turned
inside them into this bright sap they share.

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Copyright © 2021 Sheila Black All rights reserved
from Connecticut River Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission