Possession, and: Levitation

Possession

All winter, the fox came
for me, black-footed, listening
for my husband's sleep. All winter,
lights drew me into the yard
to find fireflies, green and slow,
circling his tall ears. Other nights,
he sat animal still, nose steaming,
in the snow under the pear tree
he brought to bloom.

In fear for my life, my husband
set five great hounds into the forest,
but they tumbled back pups.
I told no one that I had known him
before he died, when he was human,
or that he'd kneeled giddy, hugging
my waist, my palms cupped to his ears.
Instead, I waited and kept salted meats
and whiskey in the hedge.

Even when my husband could stay awake
to keep watch, I dreamt - not
of before, but of when he came back,
the pointed face a Noh mask
nodding in the treeline.

Levitation

Through the rear window, I would watch
slow-moving night sky, head back, the torn
vinyl seat scratching my wrist at each seam
in the road. Black power-lines and branches
cut across swarming stars as my body

slackened back to itself and the speed
became unimportant. You could have been alive
beside me, out of vision as we hovered and

dipped along unlit back-roads, my heart
sliding in my chest, the headlights projecting
flashes of mailboxes, fieldstone walls,

turns appearing and disappearing,
the black hole ahead framed by trees.

I crashed a car once and lived.
It went airborne for a moment,
but I was too angry to feel the lift, to appreciate it.

Before morning, the house was always one color,
a bronze relief of false shutters, bowed roof,
gutters heavy with leaves. I'd hear myself moving
up the steps, the keys in my hand, and the black-
primered Chevy ticking, settling in the drive.