Possum Pouch

Black Stone 55

K WATCHES TV with complete attention. We sit on a bed in a small room. He spins on hands and knees when lightning strikes out blue in the black window behind him. Terrific claps of thunder make him leap out on the bed startled, calling my name. He doesn't know the moon behind those clouds is nearly full, and that with spring bursting blossoms there arrives an accompanying violence of atmosphere. Now we both hear that pitter-patter, the loud, insistent rhythm of drip from the roof. The television light casts patterns over the room as also the sudden quick blue flashes penetrate the sheer white curtains. I sit with him writing this, his eyes integrated with image and his warm arms and chest against me. These words form close to him, an influence of his young muscles and quick, jerky rhythms. I was going to write some pompous sounding horseshit. Scratch it out instead. Night rhythms in the pen, inky blots soak into the page. Not of purpose or intent. Anole stirs against a screen, its cautious sleek body poised to move. We live in image, as we are to each other—incomplete. Disappear and come back rapidly. These intermittent flashes.

Sit with him by the window.
Warm sheets kicked on the bed.
See my face reflected now.
In the wind's eye.