Poem for Saturday

Possum Crossing
By Nikki Giovanni

Backing out the driveway
the car lights cast an eerie glow
in the morning fog centering
on movement in the rain slick street

Hitting brakes I anticipate a squirrel or a cat or sometimes
a little raccoon
I once braked for a blind little mole who try though he did
could not escape the cat toying with his life
Mother-to-be possum occasionally lopes home . . . being
naturally . . . slow her condition makes her even more ginger

We need a sign POSSUM CROSSING to warn coffee-gurgling neighbors:
we share the streets with more than trucks and vans and
railroad crossings

All birds being the living kin of dinosaurs
think themselves invincible and pay no heed
to the rolling wheels while they dine
on an unlucky rabbit

I hit brakes for the flutter of the lights hoping it's not a deer
or a skunk or a groundhog
coffee splashes over the cup which I quickly put away from me
and into the empty passenger seat
I look . . .
relieved and exasperated ...
to discover I have just missed a big wet leaf
struggling . . . to lift itself into the wind
and live

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My husband has taken one boy to Hebrew school and the other to a friend's, meaning that I can sit here with my sore throat and try to do something about all the stupid Trek news that piled up yesterday. My co-worker said that there was lots and lots of CSI news so I figured she was busy writing five stories. She wrote two. Fuck, I wrote two Trek stories and I couldn't even swallow properly, and now she's gone for the weekend leaving me with about 50 bullets.

Forgot to mention that in addition to October Project in the mail yesterday I got The World of Jack Aubrey, courtesy an Amazon.com gift certificate from the affiliate link on my web site. Between this and Hornblower's Navy which a friend in England sent me a couple of years ago, I am wallowing in Nelsonian geekdom. Someone stop me before I try to go to Greenwich for the big anniversary bash at the maritime museum next year.

And hee, there's a in Theatrical Muse. He and have a lot in common, don't they? But I should not be having lustful crossover universe thoughts, should I, because she wouldn't, would she?

Wrong thought for the morning: Russell Crowe hurts his shoulder, delaying the start of shooting for Cinderella Man, and the first thing I think is, "Damn, this probably means he won't be in Toronto at the same time as Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany."