Poetry
Easter in Albemarle County
by Jennifer Atkinson
Dead-nettle shadows in the unturned fields, pools of inch-high bluets.
Pine, oak, maple pollen - mundane gold, crushed vermillion
Blown and then smeared on the underside of a cloudline.
Chalk dust on my fingers.
Winter cress sharp on my tongue.
Another spring called from, pulled from, shaken from sleep:
Take up your bed.
I find myself walking downhill toward the river
— Meander once, now Crooked Run —
it crooks, it runs, it meanders
indifferent,
all winter grinding its floury silt for one shore,
gnawing cut-bank clay from the other.
Sunlight won't touch its dun-clouded surface until after I've left.
A possum not, I think, playing possum, lies by the path.
I'd like to open its mouth, stroke its mangy side,
fit my fingers in its marsupial pouch.
But I've seen a possum rise from death,
wobbly, swooning with dream,
Blear with hiss and fever.
Who's to say?